The Legionnaire
Author: Barry Sadler
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Historical; Adventure; Thriller; War; Fantasy; Fiction; Historical Fiction; Military Fiction; Action
Description: Dien Bien Phu. It was to be France’s most glorious victory in the Indochina War. Eleven thousand courageous Legionnaires were flown into the valley, totally unaware that fifty thousand Viet Minh with heavy cannons were waiting in the hills above them. One relentless officer vowed to lead his Communist forces to victory. But his soul would never rest until he danced on the grave of one godforsaken Legionnaire…. Death to Casca! Dien Bien Phu. It was to be France’s most glorious victory in the Indochina War. Eleven thousand courageous Legionnaires were flown into the valley, totally unaware that
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group

This is a book of fiction. All the names, characters and events portrayed in this book are Fictional and any resemblance to real people and incidents are purely coincidental.

CASCA: #11 The Legionnaire

Casca Ebooks are published by arrangement with the copyright holder

Copyright © 1984 by Barry Sadler

Cover: Greg Brantley

All Rights Reserved

Casca eBooks are for personal use of the original buyer only. All Casca eBooks are exclusive property of the publisher and/or the authors and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may not modify, transmit, publish, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the content of our eBooks, in whole or in part. eBooks are NOT returnable.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Continuing Casca’s adventures, book 12 The African Mercenary

THE CASCA SERIES IN EBOOKS

A thorn vine whipped at Langer's face, blinding him for just a second. That's all it took. In that instant, when he couldn't see, the world around him exploded. A hammer hit his chest knocking him clear off his feet. He could hear the thud of the bullets ripping into him. Blood filled his mouth, running down his ragged tunic. Ever so slowly, he twisted half around, falling face down to the earth, mouth and eyes open.

CHAPTER ONE

Ashes swirled around him, a gray snowstorm whipped into life by the flames which were devouring the heart of the Third Reich. Cyclones of fire reached for the sky, sucking the air out of the lungs of any who ventured too close to the whirlwinds of searing, cleansing death. The Panzer soldier hunched over, his camouflage jacket trying to spark and burn, but the coals were smothered by the ashes, which starved the hungry fire. A ten story building crashed to his left, collapsing in on itself as the frame was eaten away to leave only a skeletal shell. The insides had been gutted and its once human occupants turned into charred puddles of melted tissue. A new barrage thundered from the guns of Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian front, the flash of their muzzle blasts lighting up the horizon as if a great storm were gathering in the distance. Not two miles away, he could hear the salvo going overhead to smash near the park.

He left the worst of the firestorm behind him as he twisted around a mass of rubble into a street, which was amazingly clear of damage. It looked now as it would have four years ago. Not a building was touched; and yet only one street over, not a structure was left standing.

The sounds of straining engines reached him. He knew the sounds well. Tanks! The Ivans were moving in, closing the last of the thin distance that separated them from their comrades of the force under Konev and their own Third Guards Tank Army, commanded by Comrade General Zhukov. Once that was accomplished, the fate of Berlin would be sealed; except for the very few who would manage to slip through the Russian lines.

The man now known as Carl Langer shifted his Stg 44 to a handier position, using the shoulder strap to hold part of its weight. He scanned the street in front of him before racing across it in a half crouch, ready to fire. Nothing! He paused, heart pounding, in the shadow of an alley. A howl by his foot sent his heart into his mouth. The sound was completely unexpected. A dog, driven mad by the shelling, ran past him snapping its jaws spasmodically. Froth dripping from its open mouth, the animal screamed again, then began to bite its own haunches, turning in an ever tighter circle until it dropped still in the center of the street, dead.

Langer took his eyes away to watch for the more dangerous beasts that roamed the streets of Berlin this night. The victorious legions of Comrade Ivanov (Stalin) were pouring into the city killing or raping as the whim took them. There was no real resistance left to hold them back and they knew it. A few pockets of diehard fanatic SS men and some of the paratroopers of the First Parachute Army were still holding out at the air field of Templehof.

But the Ivans were not going to risk getting themselves killed this close to victory by engaging them man to man. They had time on their side, plus the equipment. They would merely wait until tanks and artillery were brought up, then pound the Fascists into jelly via long distance.

A patrol of Mongols and Tartars under the command of a Don Russian, who wore the shoulder tabs of a sergeant major, broke from cover and headed in his direction. Langer moved further back into the shadows of the alley and tried to blend in. The splinter pattern of his camouflage under its gray coat of ash made him nearly invisible. Slowly he hunched down to rest on his right knee, easing the strap pressure of the Stg 44. Raising it up a bit, he followed the motions of the advancing ten man patrol with the barrel. He would prefer not to have to fire and draw attention to himself, if they would just pass on.

The sergeant major was in the lead, a PPs 43 submachine gun in his hands. He wore the order of Suvarov third class on his breast and cursed his half savage patrol members when they bunched up too close together. Langer knew what they were doing and thinking. They were overconfident, cocky, believing there was no need to take normal precautions anymore. He knew what they were thinking from his own experience when his panzer had rolled to the gates of Moscow. He had seen the same carelessness come over many of the German troops when they'd entered a conquered city. Thinking themselves invincible, they'd fall a moment later with a sniper's bullet crashing through their brainpan.

Gods! He hoped they would just move on away from him. He had to be out of the city before dawn or he would probably be trapped with the rest of those that remained of the Berlin garrison. The thought of the years he would have to spend in a Russian slave labor camp beyond the Urals gave him no comfort.

Gregory Ilyich Sarkorsky cursed his undisciplined Asiatics again, beginning to lose his temper. The beasts were hard enough to control at the best of times. He thought about shooting one of them to make an example of him for the rest, but decided against it. After all, there seemed to be little danger left for them on the streets of Berlin. Every time they had come across Germans out in the open or in buildings, they had seen abject terror so intense that the once mighty and arrogant Fascists would willingly lick their boots or hand over their wives and daughters to be used by the Russians.

A scream jerked their heads around. A woman came running out of a smoking building where she had been hiding. Red coals had set her dress on fire. She screamed as she ran, her own speed feeding air to the flames which were spreading over her. One of the Mongols knocked her down as she ran blindly by them. He covered her body with his own to smother out the flames. Before the smoking of her seared dress had even stopped, he had her legs open and his pants down. His comrades gathered around him to cheer him on. Sergeant Sarkorsky spat in disgust, but there was nothing he could do unless he shot the pig. And after all, the woman was a German. He knew how many of his own country women had met the same fate at the hands of the Nazis. Still it was disgusting to watch. But these were not normal men. Their animal instincts were only a hair's breadth beneath the surface of their skins He could do nothing. Let them have their fun. Afterward he would put the woman out of her misery with a single shot to the brain. He was, after all, not a cruel or uncaring man. Turning his back on the scene, he lit up a "papirosa," sucking in the yellow acrid smoke as he turned away.

The sudden burst of a star shell overhead lit up the sky, throwing everything on the street into strange surrealistic patterns of glaring white. He saw something in the alley to his left. He blinked his eyes to clear them of smoke and saw the muzzle of the assault rifle pointing straight at him. He had no chance to cry a warning before the first of the Kurz 7.92mm bullets smashed his cigarette back into his mouth, blasting the tobacco out the back of his skull along with most of his brain.

Langer moved out of the shadows, turning his weapon on the backs of the bunched up Ivans. Most of them went down immediately. Only one managed to get his weapon to his shoulder before his face was blown off. The Mongol on top of the woman came to his feet, pants over his knees, only to have his belly ripped open by the last six rounds remaining in the thirty round magazine of Langer's assault rifle.

Replacing the empty magazine with a full one, he advanced carefully on to the street, stopping to check each of the bodies. Two weren't dead and he put them out with a single shot to the head. When he reached the woman, she was nearly dead. The fire had eaten off most of her hair, leaving a red seared welt on the side of her face that reached to the top of her head. Her left ear was gone, burned off. Not a pretty picture, but he had seen worse.

Langer picked her up in his arms and ran from the street, trying to get some distance between them and the ambush in case any of the Ivans's friends came to investigate the sounds of shooting. He ran for three blocks before he gently set his load down in the doorway of what had once been a toy shop. It was now merely a gutted frame with only a few unwanted relics from a happier time watching him from the broken windows.

The woman's breathing was ragged. He knew she was in great pain. He gave her a drink from his canteen, letting the water drip between her lips. She never swallowed.

"Oh shit, "he muttered. "Why this now. I don't have time to spend with her, yet I can't just leave her the way she is. " Urgency was driving him. What was the best thing to do? Stay with the woman and hope to be able to get out of the city later or be kind and put a bullet in back of her ear to stop her suffering? He didn't think she had long to live at any rate. His problem was solved for him when the woman opened her eyes for a moment, screamed out "Papa," then died. He left her in the doorway. Just one more of the millions who died in the name of some political process that always promised a better life for those who would follow it.

The Third Reich was burning. He moved out, keeping close to the sides of buildings where it was possible to crawl on the piles of rubble, so that he could orient himself in the mass of smoking ruins.

The rumble of the Russian big guns was persistent and, in front of them, the metallic grinding of tank treads was constant as long columns of Russian armor moved deeper into the city. The heavy JS-1s, named after Stalin, followed their lighter cousins, the tough T-34s that had been such a surprise to Langer and the others of the Panzer Armies when they had run into them in 1941. Steel dinosaurs, they swung their lethal, fire spouting snouts from side to side. Occasionally, one would, stop to belch fire into a storefront or the top floor of an apartment building, rock back on its suspension system as if pleased with its work, then move on looking for another target.

He kept moving, staying away from the sounds of any firing. Before dawn he had reached the suburbs of Charlottenburg and was near the limits of the Russian encirclement. Here there were few survivors left. Nearly everyone who could move under his own power, or had someone to help them, had been forced back into the inner city. He had passed several lines of Russians coming in, and had twice seen Germans being rounded up for labor gangs to clear a path through the mounds of rubble where they obstructed the advance of the Russian tanks. He was getting tired.

The events of the last days had been exhausting, both physically and emotionally. He would have to rest. The homes and buildings still standing were to be avoided. He needed a place where the Russians would have no need to go. He found what he was looking for, a burned out church with only one wall partially standing. Poking around, he made a shelter, a small cave of bricks and stone near the wall. He crawled inside and sealed the entrance up after himself. From the outside it would appear as no more than another of the tens of thousands of rubble piles that littered the city. There would be nothing here for the Russians to take; they would go after more profitable pickings in what structures still remained standing. Easing out of his pack, he opened a can of rations, chewed the tasteless ersatz compound slowly to let it dissolve in his mouth, then took one swallow from his canteen, curled up and went to sleep in his homemade tomb.

As he slept, the body of Hitler and that of Eva Braun were turned into smouldering, charred, twisted caricatures. Heinz Linge, Hitler's valet, had obeyed his orders and wrapped the Fuhrer's body and that of Eva Braun in army blankets. He then carried them out to the Chancellery garden, soaked them in petrol, and set them on fire. Those left in the "Fuhrer Bunker" were now on their own. Each made his decision whether to try for escape or to wait for the Russians. Either choice was not likely to give them any reason to expect their lives to have much longevity.

Those who did survive would obey their master's last orders and would never speak of the visit of the scar faced Panzerman, who had gone with Hitler into his quarters for their leader's final moments. They would obey Hitler's command that: "This man does not exist. You have never seen him. He has never been here. You may speak of me after this is over, but never, never must you ever in your lives however long speak of this man. "

A rat, nearly the size of a small cat, poked its head between a pile of bricks, twitching its nose from side to side while smelling the sleeping man. For a moment, its tiny brain thought about taking a bite, for the rats had grown brave in the past weeks and now seldom hesitated to attack anyone who was lying down. The figure shifted in its sleep, startling the rat who changed its mind about trying a tentative nibble and decided to go elsewhere for its dinner. It didn't like the smell of this man. A quick jerk of its tail and it was gone.

During his sleep, the Russian main force bypassed him. The Russians had advanced their lines again and he was behind them, though there would still be wandering groups of NKVD men searching out party officials and members of the hated Brown Shirts and Storm Troops of the SA and SS. He slept the full day, only opening gritty eyes when the sun began to set. His mouth tasted like someone had crapped in it, his gums, fuzzy and foul tasting. He wanted a smoke but decided against it. Groaning, Langer stretched out his legs as best he could in his confined quarters. Listening closely for any sounds from the outside, he carefully removed the bricks and stones that concealed him from view. Once he had a few stones cleared away, he looked out and waited, listening. When he heard nothing, except the distant rumble of explosions from the inner city, he crawled out and tried to get his bearings by looking at a still standing street sign. Taking a look at the setting sun, he headed west, always taking the most difficult ground when possible. He knew that the Ivans would not want to go climbing about or picking through burned out shells when there was an easier road to follow for plunder and rape.

He had to swim across two canals before he was finally clear of the last of the city of Berlin. Soaked, he gave an involuntary shiver and turned his back without looking behind to the east. He knew that he had to get as far from the Russians as possible. Somewhere to the west were British, American, and French forces. It really didn't make much difference which of them he met. From past experience he knew that if he managed to stay clear of the occupying forces for a few weeks, he would be able to blend in with the hundreds of thousands of refugees that the new masters of Europe would have to process. That could provide him with a chance to acquire new identity papers, which he would definitely need.

He kept to his plan of traveling by night as much as possible, avoiding any other parties of refugees or soldiers. Moving away from the Autobahn to avoid being rounded up with the thousands already packing the highway, he kept to the sides of the broad concrete lane leading to the west. Several times he saw killer teams of Russians moving over the farmlands in armored cars. Staying low to the ground until they passed, he wondered who they were searching for? Had Himmler or Goering escaped?

Dust clouds rose in the distance near a stand of trees. The metallic rattle of treads clattered over the dry fields. Langer froze. He knew the different sounds of Soviet armor as well as that of his own heartbeat. Another half-track on the prowl for escaping Nazi bigshots, or more likely they were simply out looting. In either case they were still dangerous, especially to one still in the uniform of the Third Reich and carrying an automatic assault rifle. He had thought about getting rid of the uniform several times, but the temptation passed with each pile of dead civilians and soldiers he came across. Most of them had been neatly lined up before being machine-gunned.

The field left few spots for cover. Dropping his body down into a clump of calf high yellow grass, he waited for the Ivans to pass on. The half-track ripped across the field, its treads gouging up clumps of earth, leaving behind a yellow wake of dust mixed with diesel fumes as the machine traversed the field.

Langer snuggled down closer to the earth. Shifting his Sturm Gewher he released the safety, hoping they would pass, him by unnoticed. As usual, his luck left much to be desired.

From the half-track he heard a cry of Stoi! The order to stop brought the half-track to a crashing halt.

He held his place on the warm earth a moment longer, hoping against hope that they had just stopped for one of them to take a leak or something. Anything but find him. The Ivans were arrogant and careless in their confidence. They had seen too many thousands of the former members of the Wehrmacht simply drop their weapons and march back to their holding pens without even an escort.

"Ruki verkh!" The order for him to raise his hands ended any fantasy he had of their going on. It was also their mistake. The half-track was about a hundred meters away from him. Twisting to the side, he scrambled to a half crouch and moved straight at them. This was not expected. From the hip, he let loose with a full auto burst from his assault rifle, letting the rounds walk up the metal sides of the vehicle and into the chest of the Siberian who had ordered him to put his hands up. The other lvans ducked for cover. That small action gave him enough seconds to close the distance between him and the half-track to forty meters. From his belt he took out his last remaining potato masher grenade, then hit the ground in a roll, unscrewing the cap and pulling the striker cord in one movement as he rose back to his knees. Twenty meters now from his target, he heaved the grenade in a high arc.

Two of the six Russians in the back of the vehicle scrambled to get away when they saw the grenade dropping toward them. The others went up in a cloud of cordite and diesel flames when the grenade set off a pile of land mines stacked neatly in the rear of the half-track.

The driver and the man next to him were blown through the windshield to hang half in and half out of the truck. From the waist down they were turned into flaming cinders. They were lucky. The explosion which threw them through the windshields had snapped their necks and spines before they had a chance to feel the flames dissolving their lower limbs. The two who escaped the explosion were stunned as they staggered to their feet, eyes trying to focus on the figure coming at them. One of the Russians tried to raise his hands to surrender but couldn't find the strength. It wouldn't have made any difference. Langer had no intention of leaving anyone around to call the wolves down on him later. Two quick three round bursts from his rifle and the Russians went south.

At a lope, he left the half-track and its occupants behind. He knew he would have to acquire a new identity soon. He'd have to get to where he could find civilians and lose himself in the crowd.

Finding the body of a civilian lying near the Autobahn, he made a quick change of clothing, keeping only his P-38 pistol. He put his identity papers on the body and set it square on the road where the next passing tank or truck would be sure to smash it. From that moment on, Carl Langer would be listed as dead if anyone ever bothered to go through the pockets of the body that carried his ID. Now he was just another refugee fleeing from the hordes of Soviet Asia. He knew there was little likelihood that he would be able to claim he was a non-combatant; he just didn't look the part. But from a distance, he should be able to blend in.

He still kept to his plan of traveling by night when he could, avoiding when possible any other parties of refugees or soldiers that he saw. It took him nearly a week to cross the plains, living off potatoes he dug from the fields or, when he was lucky, finding a dead horse that wasn't so far gone it couldn't be eaten. Once a plane, a Soviet Yak, flew overhead to drop leaflets in German announcing the death of Hitler and the unconditional surrender of all German forces. It was a wasted effort; everyone knew the war was over anyway.

As he neared the Allied lines, the numbers on the roads increased to tens of thousands. Women pushed baby carriages piled with the few scraps of their lives they had been able to salvage before the Russians found them. Children held on to their mothers' coats so as not to get lost. On the sides of the roads were the bodies of those whose strength had not been great enough to go any further. They had just lain down and quietly died.

It was nearly impossible to avoid the congestion. He was nearly run over several times by fast mobile patrols of vans, racing back and forth over the Autobahn, playing what they liked to call German pool, where one gained points for how many he could run over at one time. They weren't interested in going through the drudgery of interrogating the thousands that were trying to flee from them. Up ahead were road blocks where specially trained troops would separate those they wanted to keep in their zone.

Lagers saw planes overhead more frequently now. Fighters would fly low over the long lines of refugees, buzzing them but not firing. All the planes wore the markings of the British or American Air Forces. There were no German planes left to fly. Near Nuremberg, he took off cross country, not wanting to go through even the most cursory inspection by the Russian security forces. He knew that they would take one look at him and he would be packed off with the other escaping soldiers to the slave labor camps. The crippled and old were let go, but the ones who were capable of work would be forced to rebuild what had been destroyed in Russia, and the same time dismantle everything in Germany that could be taken apart and shipped back to Russia. He wondered why the Allies had held back so long and let the Russians take Berlin and so much other territory that they could have had under their control without having to fire a shot. For some reason they had given over to the Russians thousands of square miles of German territory. They had just stopped their advance and waited.

He wished he still had his field jacket to keep him warm. The suit he was wearing was thin and did little to keep out the damp or chill of having to sleep in the open fields or under a pile of damp leaves. Cutting across country, he entered the woods. Near Regensburg, for the first time, he saw signs of the Allies. A lorry full of British Tommies roared past him on a dirt road to disappear in a cloud of dust. They never gave him a second look.

Once past Regensburg, he found shelter for the night in a hayrick. He had just dropped off to sleep thinking that in a couple of more days he'd be in Switzerland when a pain in his ass brought him up to his feet. A bayonet had interrupted his rest. At first he thought his captors were English, but the Gallic accent that told him to get his hands up demonstrated clearly they were French. There were four soldiers carrying American weapons and wearing uniforms on which they wore the insignia of the Free French Army.

"Deine Karte, jetzt! " They demanded his papers. Instead of answering them in German, he responded in good French, "I have none." The taste of the French words on his tongue was strange. It had been many years since he had spoken anything other than German or Russian. A hand torch lit up his face, blinding him for a moment as his captors looked him over. He stood stock still as practiced hands frisked him, taking the pistol from his waistband. The light went to his feet and the army boots still on them. The shoes of the civilian he had traded clothes with had been too small. A caporal chef pointed his M-1 carbine at his face and demanded to know, "What organization were you with?"

Langer responded quickly: "Avec le Corps de Panzer."

He caught a look at the face of his captor, a thin man with a large Gallic nose and hot eyes who ordered him, "Come with us and no tricks, or I'll put a bullet in the back of your head, Heini." Langer promised not to give them any trouble.

He was shuffled along for several kilometers until they came to a paved road leading to Stuttgart. There he was handed over to a bored military policeman who checked him in and asked for his papers, which of course he didn't have on him. Then he was moved to a building being used as a temporary stockade. Inside were nearly fifty others. They all had the look of fighters about them. Some were still in uniform and there was a fair representation of the German armed forces mixed in with them, including several members of General Student's Fallschirmjagers (paratroopers) who kept to themselves as did several men who Langer thought were probably SS men, though they wore a mixture of Wehrmacht and civilian dress. Each stuck to his own kind.

They were fed and in the morning loaded into trucks and taken the short distance west from Stuttgart and Germany to the borders of France, which suited him well enough. The farther he could get away from Germany, the better he liked it. He noticed that all the men with him in the British lorry were very fit looking. The French were taking with them only those who looked to be in good condition and who had been members of fighting units. There were no civilians.

The ride was long and monotonous, passing through Nancy then heading south to Lyon. The men with him in the truck said little, now and then asking the guard if he had any cigarettes on him. A pack of Gauloises was tossed to them to be shared. Langer took one from the pack and passed it on.

At Lyon, they were off-loaded and herded into a barbed wire enclosure after they had been strip-searched once more. The shakedown produced a small .25 caliber Mauser, a trench knife and, from the Fallschirmjagers, two of the gravity knives of the kind where the blade came straight out of the handle with a flick of the wrist.

After all were checked out completely, including their bodily orifices, they were sent in to join several hundred others in the compound. All the POWs were like themselves, fighting men. They were hustled into rough shacks and tents, where their own former comrades in arms gave them a thorough delousing, then had their heads shaved to get rid of any of the little pests that might remain. Their clothes were fumigated.

Only then were they brought in one at a time to stand before a member of the field gendarmerie. He questioned them about their activities in the German armed forces and compared their features to a stack of photographs. If they resembled any of the pictures, they were quickly hustled off through a rear door and not seen or heard from again. Only a very few were given this special treatment.

CHAPTER TWO

Langer knew they were looking for war criminals and escaping Nazi leaders, many of whom had put on the uniforms of common soldiers to try and lose themselves in the crowd much as he had.

Once the separation of those suspected of major war crimes had been made, those remaining were formed into several groups of ten to twenty. On the tenth day after his capture, he and his group were brought to attention by a Polish sargent wearing the insignia of the 13th Demi Brigade Etrangeres on his American fatigue uniform. He left no doubt in anyone's mind where his sympathies lay. The Legion was all! Countries and nationalities were nothing; only the Legion mattered. He made his offer to the assembled men in plain clear words. Volunteer for the Legion or go to the POW camps where they might not be released for years. If they volunteered, they would be given new papers, then, after completing their enlistment, most important, a French passport and citizenship if they wished. In the Legion they would be safe from their pasts.

Out of nearly three hundred men, two hundred and twenty three chose the POW camps. The rest were more than ready to give their oath of loyalty to France in exchange for the rights and gifts promised by the Polish sergent chef. Some of the volunteers would be weeded out later when they took their physicals, but the pre selection techniques shown by their field recruiters kept the number small. Many of them, when they were picked up and put into the bag, thought they were to be rearmed for the time when the Allies would move against the Russians. This rumor faded rapidly when they were told to get ready to leave. They would be taken by convoy to Marseilles and from there most would soon be off to the training camps in Algeria.

It was amazing the changes that could take place in a few weeks. Hitler was dead. Germany had surrendered unconditionally. He had made it out of Berlin ready to give odds that he would be captured by the Ivans and sent to the slave labor camps. Now he was en route to North Africa and what? France wouldn't be doing all this for nothing. Where the Legion went, trouble lived.

The crossing from Marseilles was made on choppy waters that soon had the tub's passengers heaving their guts before they were at sea three hours. Langer fared well enough. One minor benefit from his ancient affliction was he was never very prone to mal de mer and therefore received some pleasure in helping his fellow shipmates by eating their rations for them during the short sail from Europe to the coast of North Africa.

It was one that he had made more times than he could recall. The worst part of it was the rancid odor of too many men, most stinking from their own vomit, packed in close confinement between the steel decks of the rusting freighter. They were permitted on deck twice a day to stretch their legs and get some fresh air, but always under the watchful eyes of guards who mounted their posts with the safeties off their weapons, ready to fire, even though the men they guarded would someday be their comrades. However, until they had proven themselves, they had to be watched, for they were the Boche, the hated Hun. Even the half dozen members of the guards that were of German origin felt themselves to be set apart from their countrymen below deck. They had passed the boundaries of national identity. They were Legionnaires.

As before, Carl noticed that the men separated into different groups. He wondered why this was always true? He had seen it often enough. The cruel ones would gather to bully the others; and the intellectuals would find quiet corners to discuss obscure philosophies and the meaning of life. There were a few like him who preferred their own company. He knew these were the most dangerous of all. The ones who stayed alone were those with the greatest amount of hate in them or those who had something to hide. Men who had things about their past to conceal would not hesitate to kill to keep it that way.

The vibrations of the old coal bucket eased as it slowed to a crawl upon entering the port of Oran. It was just before dawn. Carl knew that in a few hours he would be back on the soil of North Africa. Officially, the war had been over three months now and he was looking forward to seeing Oran and Algiers again. He knew he would not feel too strange being in North Africa. He had been there in much the same position before. The Legion was a marvelous device for one to use when there was a need to get lost and find a new identity. He also had an appreciation of the warm blood of the women. He recalled a dancer he had once known who came from Moulay and wondered if he went there, would he be able to find one her equal in the fine art of driving a man crazy.

It looked like the Legion was still organized much as it had been. But why were the French so anxious to bring their former enemies into their ranks? It must have been that France had trouble brewing on the horizon and with her own manpower severely depleted by the war, had to rebuild her strength by using that of her former conquerers. Well, that had happened more than once in history too.

A whistle from the upper deck, followed by the curses of a caporal chef, told them to get ready to disembark; they were at the docks of Oran. He already had his small sack of personal effects ready and shoved his way up to the front of the line, waiting to climb the damp rusting ladders to the deck. He had never liked being closed in.

At the word from the caporal, they began to climb. As they made it on deck, their names were called out and checked off the master roster. They were then put in ranks and marched down the ramp to the docks, where they were immediately put on trucks. The flaps dropped and they were driven out of the city escorted by gendarmes in American jeeps with machine guns mounted on the hoods. Anyone who suddenly felt a desire to change his mind about joining the Legion would not live long enough to do anything about it.

The sun was barely up as they were loaded in the trucks, and before the heat of the day rose, they were already well out into the fifty miles that lay between the sea ports and what would be their new home. Langer knew that for many it would be hell.

Sidi bel Abbes was the training center for the Legion. Before they were there a month, many would stick rifles into their mouths and pull the triggers with their toes, or simply hang themselves by their belts. The Legion had only one way of training men and that was to discipline and push them to the point where they were more afraid of their sergents than they were of dying. The Legion did have a few things in common with the SS and that was one of them, but Langer also knew that those who did make it through the training cycle for the most part would, in spite of their curses and oaths otherwise, end up having a great pride and feeling of belonging. That was what made the Legion what it was, a union of men.

He caught a glimpse behind him as the trucks entered the crenellated walls that surrounded the city. Farmers with carts hauled by donkeys shook their fists at the trucks as they were forced off the road to make way. They were on their way into the central market to sell their wares as had been done since the country had belonged to the Carthaginians. Algeria had not always been a kind host to the Legion and Langer knew there would be trouble here again. There had always been trouble here. Perhaps that was why the French were in such a hurry to build up their forces. They were afraid that the rebels would take advantage of their weakened condition to stage another uprising.

Sidi Slimane hadn't changed very much over the years. The same flat roofs and whitewashed mud brick houses were there as were the hostile looks under hooded eyes that watched them pass. He knew that the story of Abdul el-Kabar, the first Arab leader to fight against the Legion with any success, was still being told in the coffee houses. And that had been in 1832. The Arabs, like the Chinese in many ways, did not have the European concept of time.

Curses and whistles informed him they were to get their asses out of the trucks and into ranks. They had arrived. They were at the headquarters of the 1st Regiment des Etrangeres. The sun pierced his eyes and he recalled a few of the things he didn't like about Africa. Their names were called off again, then they were marched into a walled enclosure that served as their barracks area, the walls of which were guarded by armed men. The only way out was with a pass, which would be rarely seen, or to be on patrol or training exercises. During their first year in the Legion there would be damned few passes.

They were fed a sparse meal then sent to draw their kit from the quartermaster, all the time being escorted under the watchful eyes of a sergent chef and a caporal, who swore at them in a mixture of French, German and Arabic. Langer smiled inwardly at several of the Arabic curses he hadn't heard before. The new recruits were separated into groups by language capability, the majority of which was German, though there were several Poles and others from eastern European countries. They were displaced persons without papers, or those for whom death awaited if they returned to the lands of their birth. Most of them had been either foreign volunteers in the Wehrmacht or from forced labor camps. Once more the Legion proved the ability of its peculiar form of democracy to work. Here, former enemies shared bread and swore to protect each other in battle. Not that there weren't a few difficulties from some die-hard members of the master race, but the Legion had its own method of dealing with them a field pack filled with sand on their backs while they marched the parade ground from dawn to dusk under the lashing tongue of a sergent or caporal. It was not unusual for a strong man to die from this minor form of drill punishment the Etrangeres considered suitable for minor disciplinary infractions.

For Langer it was very familiar. He knew the routine and kept to himself, ignoring the barking of the NCOs. Quickly, efficiently, he set up his bunk area, folded his clothes according to regulations, dressed in the leftover mixture of uniforms from the Vichy stocks and was ready for the inevitable call to ranks. It came before most of the men even had their boots tied.

The next weeks were spent in hectic, continuous spasms of training. Even though most of the men there had been soldiering for years, the Legion treated them as if they knew nothing and everything had to be learned all over again.

1946 was welcomed in by a forced march of fifty kilometers with full field kit. Langer began to develop a personal distaste where Sergent chef Hermann was concerned. The man stayed on his ass constantly and had tried everything to get. Langer to make a mistake, and had failed. Langer thought he knew why. Once again, a woman had caused him problems with his superiors. How was he to know that Hermann had been paying her rent? Besides that, as the old saying goes, there is only one thing that can't be worn out and women have it. He didn't want to keep her only to borrow her for a while.

Whatever gripes Langer had against the sergent chef, he did know his business and the regiment was shaped up in short order. The few squabbles among different races had been laid to rest as the men united in their one single point of agreement: who was going to put a bullet into Sergent chef Hermann and when?

They were sent out for a few patrols against bandit groups who raided convoys from time to time, but there was no serious action. It was while in a jeep coming back from the bazaar at Sidi bel Abbes that he saw a familiar face in the passenger seat of an American truck going in the opposite direction. He didn't really believe it at first. They had passed each other too fast, but there was no way that there could have been two men in the world with the same features. It had been Gustaf Beidemann, the last survivor of his tank crew in Russia. Langer was sure it was him, because not only were the features the same but the face was contorted in one of its most common positions, namely that of stuffing an incredible length of sausage down a gaping maw.

The two and a half ton truck bore the insignia of the 13th DBE and as soon as they had returned to Sidi Slimane, he began to make inquiries as to what unit had moved up that day. He tried to find out through their personnel office and had to resort to a bribe of three bottles of good brandy to get any results. A phone call to the 13th by his personnel sergeant and he had the answer. There was most certainly a Gustaf Beidemann assigned to them. Langer wasn't surprised that Gus had used his real name. The human tank was not one for doing anything as obvious as changing it, but then Gus wasn't wanted for anything by anyone except the military police of the now defunct German Wehrmacht, and no one cared what they wanted anymore.

It took another two months before he was able to get a two day pass and permission to leave the vicinity of Sidi Slimane. He hitched a ride with a truck carrying supplies to town and half-dozed in the rocking vehicle. When someone else did the driving it always made him sleepy. It was easy to ride along over the dusty roads, his eyes closed, remembering what now seemed an eternity ago. He was on the dusty roads of Russia as they crossed the frontier in "Operation Barbarossa," the invasion of the Soviet Union. He listened to the screeching clatter of the tracks of his MK-IV as they drove over panicked Russians. Bypassing thousands of soldiers, they left them to be rounded up later by the infantry as they pushed deep behind the Russian front, severing the Soviet lines of communication and capturing huge depots of supplies and arms.

The road to Moscow had been opened. Then setbacks began when Stalin released the Siberian Divisions. They were kept in Manchuria to protect their eastern borders in case of invasions by the Japanese. When the Japanese turned their armies toward Southeast Asia, Stalin was able to bring in the fresh, fully equipped Siberians for the defense of Moscow. They had made the difference against the tired Germans, who'd found themselves fighting in the midst of an early winter, still wearing summer gear. They had been pushed back out of Moscow. That was their first defeat, but others had followed.

His had been a good crew. Teacher, Manny, Stefan, Yuri the Tatar and of course Gus, the human septic tank who swore that the only logical reason for invading Russia was for the vodka, as there certainly wasn't anything else there worth having unless it was one of the big-titted female commissars. Now they were all gone. Only he and Gus had survived. All the rest lay in forgotten holes somewhere in the wastelands of Russia, and young Manny didn't even have that. His body had been blown into frozen splinters at the battle of the Dnieper and Plavna marshes.

The last time he'd seen Gus was from the window of a staff car when the security men for the SS were taking him in for treason. Heading back from the front, Gus had been walking along the road with a pig on a leash. He marched along casually as if he didn't have a care in the world and the noise about him would end soon, leaving him in peace to consume his pig at his leisure.

After being left off at Sidi bel Abbes Langer made a disappointing trip to the 13th DBE 's personnel office where he was informed that private Gustaf Beidemann was no longer in residence, and should, by this time next week, be getting a gut full of rice and nouc nam sauce. Gus was en route to Indochina.

He knew that it would not be too long before he joined his old friend. Fate had a way of pulling people together. Fate and war. Gus was in the Orient now, but Langer knew that he and many others would soon be going over to what was rapidly becoming known as the "meat grinder" – Indochina. The Legion had been sending reinforcements and new units there with constantly increasing frequency to fight against the guerrilla forces of a tiny gray bearded man, only now becoming known to the world Ho Chi Minh. Since the end of World War Two, so called "Armies of Liberation" had been cropping up daily in the former colonies of England and France, most of them supported by the Soviets or Red Chinese. It was with an old soldier's sense of the future that he knew that he would soon be at war once more. This time there would be no winters of frozen ground and bodies.

CHAPTER THREE

Heavy and oppressive, the heat of the midday lowered itself down through the thick covering of leaves and vines to settle on the camouflaged bodies lying in wait. The only sounds came from the twenty five men of the 13th DBE, strung along the path leading from the Tonkin mountains to the rice lands of the Red River delta.

It had taken weeks of scurrying through the brush like field rats to locate it, but patience is its own reward, and they were soon to be paid for their perseverance. Today, tomorrow and their quarry would be coming along that trail. Huang Nguyen Thich, one of the big chiefs of the Viet Minh Intelligence Network, was going to see a girl named Lin. Not just any girl, but one who had made a habit of sleeping with high ranking French officers (no one of less rank than full colonel). Through her, he had gained access to plans that had given his force of guerrillas the advantage time and again over the hated French. He had to see her in person this time. She had forwarded to him the story that she had things of vital importance to General Giap, which could only be related to him personally; she no longer trusted her contacts.

Langer didn't like thinking what the French security men might have done to the girl to get her to betray Thich. They knew how to play just as rough as the Asians did. Whatever they had done, or had promised to do to her, had been enough to get her to give up a list of her contacts and arrange the supposed meeting with the one man who would trust her implicitly, her older brother..

Langer shivered with the damp heat as prickles raced along his body like a column of ants on their way to a party. A rumble down the side of the trail nearly brought him to his knees until he recognized the cause of the disturbance. Gus had performed one of his famous simultaneous stomach growls and farts. Langer was more concerned about the Viet Minh smelling Gus's aromatic discharge than he was of them hearing it. Of course they would probably think that it was no more than a dead elephant which had been lying around the jungle for a week or two.

It had taken him three years to finally catch up with Gus. This was his second tour in Indochina and the third for Gus. In the past, they had passed each other coming and going. It was Gus who had finally brought them together after he'd found out that his former tank commander in the Panzer army of the eastern front was still alive and had been looking for him. Instead of rotating when his time was up, he was waiting at the piers at Haiphong, forty kilometers outside of Hanoi, when the transport carrying Langer pulled up to the docks.

Langer was by this time a caporal chef, still under the jaundiced eye of Sergent chef Hermann. But he was too good at his job to be sent to another unit. Besides that, Hermann liked to settle with those for whom he had a hard on personally.

When they had begun to file off the boat, Langer was up front leading his section. Suddenly his feet left the ground as a mouth accented by one shining gold tooth slobbered over him. Arms the size of telephone poles gave him what was considered to be a tender hug and nearly caved in his ribs.

This demonstration upset Hermann, who began to curse and bellow at Langer and Gus for breaking the routine of the disembarkment. Setting Langer down gently, Gus moved to face Hermann. Screwing up his face under his regulation kepi, he squinted at the sergent chef and spat in front of his feet, his hand touching the trench knife at his belt.

"Sergent chef," he began, speaking slowly in German, his heavy gut pressing its webbed belt against the lesser form of Hermann. "I don't really believe that you would wish to be so insensitive as to interrupt a reunion which I have looked forward to for many years. There are few things in this world that I hate so much as a rude and ugly person. Now I know that you can't do anything about your unfortunate appearance, at least not without the help of a good plastic surgeon or possibly a flame thrower, but your manners are something that could be corrected quickly without you ever setting foot off this ramp. "

He farted to accent his words before continuing. "The only thing which I might hate more than such ugliness is one who would offend or even indelicately disturb the rightful and tranquil existence of one of my friends." At that moment, two men staggering under the weight of the butt plate for a heavy mortar passed them by. As they did, one lost his footing on the ramp and fell to his knees. The plate, which weighed as much as a full grown man, thumped to the ramp. Gus leaned slightly over and grabbed the metal plate with one hand and easily raised it up to chest level, holding it as a child would a toy. Gus held it like that until the two men regained their grip on the plate and staggered off down the ramp. He knew exactly what he was doing. Without waiting for any response from Hermann, he turned away, saying gently, "Now that we understand each other, I'm sure you'll have no objections if I take my friend and get him laid. I'll bring him back tomorrow. I know where you're going to be billeted. "

As they moved off, Langer being gently yet firmly tugged at by Gus, the human tank waved a couple of pieces of paper over his head and shouted back, "Don't bother to send the `headhunters' after us," using the old expression reserved for the security police of the SS. "I have acquired passes for us both, good until roll call."

Whether they were real passes or not, Langer couldn't tell and Gus never showed them to him, but he would never doubt that they were. Gus had an insane way of getting what he wanted.

Hermann was pale with rage, but then, no one likes to fight a madman, especially not one like that. He promised himself to put another name on his rapidly growing list of those he had scores to settle with.

Langer's reverie was broken by a triple click on his walkie-talkie, the signal that further down the trail one of his outposts had spotted armed men coming toward them. Twice before, in the three days they had been there, the radio had broken in with double clicks meaning no enemy soldiers. Peasants were using the trail to take their families to town or to carry a few packs of goods for trade.

If their information was right, then this would be a chance to take out one of the best military minds the Viets had on their side. He rose up enough for his head to see over the bushes to his right and waved to Captain Claude Perault, the commander of this little group of assassins. Perault was a slightly built, large nosed professional, a graduate of St. Cyr, the French West Point. His thin frame hid an amazing amount of strength. Not the muscled kind, but the kind that meant endurance under the worst conditions, even if it meant days out in the enemy zone.

The outpost was set two kilometers down the trail to give them more than enough time to prepare for their guest's arrival. All weapons were checked and cocked, ready for the action they had been created for. The ambush was classic in design. Set up in the form of an L. The short arm facing down the path had automatic weapons set between firing stakes to limit their traverse so they wouldn't hit their own men. On the long arm, all of the Legionnaires were on the same side of the path. The other side of the path had been mined and booby trapped. If the ambushed Viets tried to take over there, they'd be in worse shit than if they stood and fought. The men on the listening post would move in behind the Viets to cut off any retreat back down the path. They still had a few minutes for each of the Legionnaires to do the things they always did just before a fight. Most wanted a smoke, but it wasn't allowed since they had set up their killing zone. And it wouldn't be permitted until they either finished off the Viet Minh or were forced to bug out. Several had a sudden need to take a leak as word of the approach of the enemy went from man to man.

Captain Perault slid closer to Langer, dark eyes straining to see through the trees and brush down the trail. Another set of clicks on the radio came in after a quick set of two and two. After that, each click meant ten men in the approaching party. Eight times the radio gave its count. Eighty men, give or take a few, were on their way. The Viets were very close. A movement where the path bent to the west drew all eyes. A figure detached itself from the wall of the forest, then was joined by two others. Perault nudged Langer as he whispered: "Les eclaireurs de Viet." Langer nodded, thinking that it was pretty obvious the approaching men were enemy scouts, but if the captain wanted to reinforce his opinion, then why not?

Langer hissed to Gus, who grinned, his gold tooth sparkling even through the cover of the trees. Langer pointed down the trail and held up his hand, signaling for Gus to hold his fire until he gave the word. Gus nodded. He was at the corner of the long arm and the short of the L, a 57mm recoilless rifle loaded with canister shot ready to be fired. He carried the awkward piece of death with the ease that most soldiers would have carried a carbine.

The Viet scouts came on at a regular pace, not careless but not overly alert either. This was, and had been, a safe route for years. There was no reason to expect anything out of the ordinary. The fact that they performed their duties with any attention at all proved they were regulars and not just the half trained villagers who fleshed out the Viet Minh ranks on a part time basis.

The scouts passed, watched by the eyes of the Legionnaires, who followed their movements through the sights of their weapons. Every man in the unit but two was equipped with an automatic weapon, most with the 9mm French Mats 49 submachine gun, some with .45 caliber American M-3s or the famous Thompson, which was not highly favored because of its tendency to jam under rough conditions. Spread out along the ambush site were four FM 24/29 light machine guns, which resembled the English or Czech Bren to a large degree and which most of the gunners would have been glad to trade for a Bren, if they'd been able to.

The Viet scouts were armed with captured French arms, a Mats 49 rechambered for the Russian 7.63 and a Mas 36 bolt action rifle. Small, wiry men, they looked well fed and fitted out in khaki battle dress under floppy forage hats. The ambushers held their fire, letting the scouts pass. They would be taken out later by a man placed farther down the trail for just such a purpose. Two hundred meters behind the scouts came the main force of the escort party for Huang Nguyen Thich. They were much the same as the scouts. No amateurs for the intelligence officer's party. Weapons were held relaxed but at the ready. Perault broke out in a spontaneous acrid sweat. Langer knew the sour odor was the sweat of fear. But there would be no trouble with the captain; he had been with him before. Once the shit started, the sweat ended. The captain was just the anxious type who didn't like waiting.

There were several men around the age of their target, but only one who wore the unconscious mantle of authority, as if he had been born into royalty. That was their man! Thich was in the center of the column, his uniform better made, steel rimmed glasses set over a strong, well fleshed face. German made Zeiss binoculars hung by a leather strap on his chest. His hands held an American M-3 submachine gun with practiced ease, the bolt cover open, though the weapon wasn't cocked. Careful, but not careful enough. Finally they reached the killing zone. Perault signaled to Gus, who set a 57mm recoilless rifle on his shoulder, the barrel pointing straight down the trail, his loader standing by ready to slap in another round as soon as the first one left the tube. Without being told, everyone knew the moment when the fight would start. Each readied himself, fingers slowly taking up the slack on triggers, grenades being placed in handier spots.

The 57mm rifle vomited the canister round out of its tube. Hundreds of small bearings erupted down the jungle path, an onslaught of steel balls that tore bodies apart. Before the first men in the Viet column knew they were dead, another round had been loaded and fired. The roar of the rifle nearly drowned out the accompanying chatter of automatic weapons as they raked over the column. In the first six seconds, nearly sixty of the escort went down either wounded or killed. The remaining Viets responded with textbook precision. Instead of taking cover on the free side of the trail, they turned and charged straight into the jungle wall at their ambushers. Thich led the way, his M-3 taking out two Poles who'd joined the Legion together in '46. The surviving Viets knew they didn't have the strength to roll up the flanks of the ambushers and made straight for the jungle and cover. As they ran, four dropped behind to provide a delaying action for the pursuit they knew would soon follow.

Perault cried out for the men of the second squad to go with him after Thich. The other squads were to follow as soon as they finished mopping up the wounded Viets and had checked them for papers.

The ambush had taken less than twelve seconds from beginning to end. The wounded Viets were put out of their misery with single shots to the brain. They didn't have time to deal with prisoners, especially wounded ones. Now that their target had gotten away, they would be in deep shit if the Viets had any radio communications with them and could call for help. They knew there were several large formations of Viet Minh in the region and the noises of the ambush could compromise them all. They had to move and move fast if they were to have any chance at all of taking their target.

Perault was behind three of his men when they met the Viet delaying party. They went down, each shot through the stomach. Villon's submachine gun rattled, taking out one of the Viets. The others broke and ran back into the brush for another fifty meters to a place where the French would have to cross a small clearing to follow them. Then setting up again, once more they took out the lead man in the French squad. The pursuit halted. The Legionnaires took cover as rapid fire from the Viets pinned them down.

Langer came up to the clearing with his squad. Seeing that Perault was pinned down, he moved to the right, circling around the clearing. From the return fire, he knew there were only a few of them out there. Perault gave him covering fire, each side now keeping the other in place. The Viet blocking force knew what was going to happen but they didn't give an inch. They stood their ground, knowing that each second they held up the French gave their comrades time in which to escape or for aid to come to them. A Viet Minh battalion was dug in only four kilometers away, near the Bach Su Valley.

Flanking the three surviving Viets was no problem. They weren't able to do much more than just stay where they were and return fire at those across the clearing. Langer and his squad came up behind them and finished them off. During all this time, the rest of the platoon had moved up to join Perault, with them Gus, his 57mm rifle dangling from his left hand. Perault shouted for Langer to get on the trail as he was already in the lead.

Thich knew what was happening behind him. He had a lead of five hundred meters now and knew how to gain more. He ordered five more of his men to halt and dig in. Each second they fought gave him more of a chance to survive. He was in his mind and theirs, of infinitely more importance than they were. Ten lives or ten thousand were not worth the loss of his. His mind was like a computer, already analyzing the possibilities, considering the odds on each action. Why were the French at that spot at that time? Accident, coincidence, or were they waiting for him?

Heart pounding in his chest, he took the lead, forcing his way through thick brush and vines that attempted to gouge out his eyes and rip his clothes from his body. He set the pace and any that fell behind would not be helped. He had to make it just a few more kilometers to where he knew the outposts of the 27th Peoples Battalion would give him protection.

Too soon he heard the sounds of violent death; the unmistakable whooshing of the recoilless rifle accompanied by the staccato chatter of submachine gun fire that meant the five men he had left behind had not slowed the pursuers up very much, if at all.

Gus had caught up with Langer at the next block. His 57mm rifle had taken the enemy out with one round, though he did take time enough to kick out the brains of one of the Viets who was not yet dead but was merely lying there with his left arm torn off at the shoulder. One of Gus's heavy combat boots ended the man's agony.

Another five were sent out, this time with orders to keep separated from each other and to work as snipers. They were to delay, and if possible, rather than kill, make shots that wounded. Wounded men would slow up the French more than dead ones.

With Gus and Langer were seven others who had managed to keep up with their pace. The rest were up dragging behind or taking care of the four wounded they had acquired during the ambush. These were already being taken out to a clearing where helicopters were supposed to have extricated all of them from the ambush. Now only the wounded would be taken back to the field hospital at Hanoi.

Lim Hoah was proud of his rank of sergeant. To be a Trung si after only two years' service was not a small thing of honor. He had never been successful in the life left them by the French, but in the great Army of Liberation led by Father Ho, he had found a cause and a reason for being. Perhaps that reason would be realized completely at this point in time. Or perhaps he was to die. But what glorious things would come to pass if his death could bring the defeat of the French? He was ready to do anything that would save Thich.

In another culture he would have gone to his death in the arena as food for the lions, to proclaim his faith. Martyrs are not really that rare. But they are all dangerous especially when they have made up their minds to kill someone else while giving up their own lives. Hoah placed his four men in careful spots where they would have clear fields of fire, as clear as the terrain permitted, and gave them clear orders that no one was to leave his place on pain of death. If they left, then he would kill them. This was their chance to do something with great meaning for the cause of the liberation. Here they would fight and save thousands of their countrymen and comrades from death. If Thich were not captured, but merely killed, the loss of his knowledge would set them back many months if not years, during which thousands more would die.

Hoah selected a place for himself where he had good cover by a fallen log of teakwood. Between its limbs he would be able to see all, and if the Thanh Tien (the old gods of the mountains) were kind, then he would be the last of his countrymen at this place to die in battle against the hated oppressor. Vi Dan Chien Dau! The slogan of "We Fight For The People" was the last thought in his mind. He was not the last to die but the first. A wild round from Gus's tube had missed its target, ricocheting off a tree, sending a white phosphorous round straight into the trunk of the tree where Hoah was waiting.

Without the example of Hoah, and his weapon at their backs, three of the other Viets decided to give up. One other comrade had gone to join Hoah and his ancestors when his rifle jammed and he tried to bayonet the scar faced caporal. It was pathetic to watch as the Legionnaire tore the rifle from their comrade's hands, then twisted his head so that he would always look from whence he came. They had thrown their weapons down and risen from their places of concealment, ready to cooperate.

Thich had stopped for a breather on the crest of a rise in the trail, a thousand meters farther down from the place where he had left Hoah to set up the final delaying action. He had been watching when the white phosphorous shell incinerated Hoah. Thich had never liked him very much anyway. The man was a fanatic and they were always tricky to deal with.

At a break through the trees, he refocused his binoculars and zeroed in on his pursuers. The man in obvious authority was not an officer but a non-com. He thanked the gods for the Germans who made such good lenses. He was able to bring the man's face into focus. It was one he would not forget. The color of the eyes was not clear, but there was a scar on his face, and the set of the strong, stocky body had a characteristic to it that he would remember if ever they met again.

Langer felt a chill. He had been alive too long not to know when he was being watched. Turning his body slowly, he faced up the trail toward the ridge. A sparkle of light proved him correct. Someone was watching him and he was pretty sure he knew who. Raising his weapon above his head, he moved it in an up and down motion as he saluted the watcher and made a slight bow as if to say, "I know that I'm not going to have time to visit with you today, but perhaps tomorrow will be better. "

Thich jerked the glasses back from his eyes. He did not like the manner in which the scarred one had turned to look at him deliberately, as if he knew who was watching. Thich was not superstitious, but he did make a promise to visit the grave of his father and make a small gift of rice and incense to his spirit. Of all the things which had happened this day, the salute to him from the Legionnaire was the most upsetting. He would have to make some special inquiries to see if he could find out more about this man. Instinct was often the best weapon that one in the intelligence and espionage field could have, and he felt that the man below him was trouble.

A cry of greeting brought Thich's mind back to his situation. He was safe now. The report of the recoilless rifle had brought a patrol from the 27th Peoples Battalion to investigate. Now it would be the turn of the French to run for their lives. The hare was now the hound. But he would not take part. He had much to do. He especially needed to get in touch with his sister. And there was the scarred one. . . .

CHAPTER FOUR

Gus had joined Langer and was following his finger to where his friend had seen the reflection from Thich's binoculars. Grunting, he cursed his loader for being too slow. Raising the tube to his shoulder, he set his eye on the rubber framed reticule, estimated the angle of drop, and pulled the trigger. Thich had just enough time to scream as he saw the rocket moving as if in slow motion over the tops of the trees, arcing straight at him. Instinctively, he threw his body down behind a tree as the round passed within a foot of his head to explode in the midst of the soldiers of the 27th Regiment, now rushing to his aid. Four of them were mashed into pate, the others thrown down with ruptured eardrums and eyes that drained serous fluid.

Behind the first soldiers of the 27th came others, a full platoon. Thich rose to his feet, screaming orders at them. Quickly, they set up a line on the ridge and began to lay down fire on the tree line below. The Legionnaires hit the dirt. Langer was trying to figure out what to do next when Perault finally reached him. He pointed out the new situation, which was rapidly deteriorating as the enemy in front gained in fire power. Several crew served weapons and at least one 60mm mortar was brought into play. That meant they were probably outnumbered three or four to one, if not by more. As there was almost no possibility of them being able to take Thich or kill him, Perault made a rapid decision and ordered a retrograde action. In other words, they were to get the hell out of here!

The soldiers of the 27th Regiment of the People’s Army of Liberation were not amateurs. Officers quickly conferred with Thich, who gave them the scenario. Without hesitation, they brought up their units, sent out companies on either flank and began to move down the center toward the French. If Comrade Thich said he wanted the Legionnaires in the valley below, then they would do their best to give them to him, regardless of their own losses. A man who had dinner regularly with Comrade Ho and General Giap was not one to refuse.

Now it was the turn of the French to run for their lives. War had that strange quality of being able to change directions within seconds. Leapfrogging back, they took turns, with each fire team giving cover to the next. There was no panic; these were all professionals who had fought in battles from Moscow to the Philippines.

Bullets snapped by their ears. Three men went down with minor wounds from spent bullets. They were still able to run though and moved to the head of the retreating column pushed along by their friends. The Legion would not readily leave any of its wounded to the tender mercies of the Viet Minh.

They ran back the way they came, breaking through brush and bamboo clusters. Chests aching, mouths sticky and dry and tasting of bile, they cursed and hacked and fought their way back until they heard the comforting, unmistakable, flapping noise of chopper blades. American made Sikorskys were on site, waiting for the word to come in, which was quickly given by Perault whose face was pale and sweaty with the exhaustion of fear and anger that he had failed to get Thich.

The Legionnaires piled into the open doors of the banana shaped helicopters. Helping hands from the copters' crews pulled them inside to safety. Safety, that is, if they were able to get over the tree line and out of range of the increasing Viet fire that was now coming from the edge of the clearing they had selected as their pickup site.

Gus leaped in behind Langer, throwing his 57mm rifle in front of him, knocking down two of the crewmen. Behind him came a cry of pain. The chopper was beginning to lift off, its rotors throwing up clouds of yellow dust as the last of the on loading Legionnaires screamed again. Bullets ripped through his legs trying to break his grip on the doorway of the helicopter. Gus reached over with one of his paws, grabbed the man by his field jacket and jerked him inside with the same ease he had used to throw the recoilless rifle at the two crewmen.

Noses tilted forward, the helicopters moved up and away, staying close to the tree tops in order to give the Viets less time to sight on them. They moved away from the field, medics already treating the wounded as Gus leaned back against the canvas straps of the seats and lit up a smoke.

Absentmindedly he said to Langer, "I wonder what's for dinner tonight?"

At Bach Ninh they off loaded, turned their wounded over to the ambulance drivers and went to their barracks. Captain Perault had to go on to Hanoi by car and report to General Salan why they hadn't gotten Thich. Langer didn't envy him his task. The general was not a Legion officer and would show little sympathy for failure. After leaving his office, Perault had a sudden premonition that he might be patrolling beaches on Devil's Island until his retirement.

Gus and Langer did what each of them desired the most at that moment. Langer took a shower and hit the sack and Gus hit the kitchen, raising hell with the cooks for not having anything ready for him. Their flimsy excuse of not knowing when he would be coming back was not acceptable. However, Gus was always a forgiving man and after they made reparations by preparing a meal for him of escargot, truffles in wine and butter sauce, garnished with two of the giant six pound lobsters from the Tonkin Gulf, he left the cooks with the promise that he held no grudges for their lack of consideration.

Another was not dining so well that evening. Huang Nguyen Thich sat by an open campfire at the headquarters of the 27th Regiment. Deep in thought, he applied his mind to the problem. It must have been him the Legionnaires were after. Otherwise they would not have made such an effort to catch up with those that had broken through their ambush. He did a rundown on those who knew of his meeting with his sister. It was easy to count them off on one hand. There were only two, one of which had been killed in the ambush. The other one was a member of his personal staff. His aide-de-camp, Phai Lam, was an officer whose father had been killed by the French and had no other living relatives. Thich had taken him into his service when he had only been thirteen years old. Still, he would be checked out as a matter of routine, though Thich felt the informer was not to be found there. Thich was the closest thing Phai Lam had for a father.

He would go to Hanoi. He would have his meeting with his sister. If she was the one who had betrayed him, he would know it. She had never been able to deceive him, not even when they were children. A distant crash of thunder over the mountains to the west brought a cold chill, reminding him of the nearness of the rocket shell that had nearly hit him. He would also find out who the scar-faced Legionnaire was while he was in Hanoi. Perhaps he could arrange a meeting with that person also. Two birds with one stone?

As Thich was moving closer to Hanoi, Langer and Gus were in a bar enjoying a day off, taking their ease, sipping Pernod, reliving the past and wondering about the future. Since the end of the war in Europe, Gus had been with the Legion after being rounded up in much the same manner Langer had been. He and Langer both liked Indochina, the nature of its people, the richness of its culture. For Gus, the food was a paradise, as were the delicate raven haired women in their silk trousers and flowing ao dais.

Langer teased him a bit about his taste in women changing. In Russia, he had been hot about the broad hipped, tree-thighed women there. Personally, Langer thought that they were better suited for this hairy tank than were the delicate doll like creatures of the Orient. But then, Gus had always been adaptable.

The unit Langer had landed with had been absorbed into several other units. He and Hermann, along with fifty others who had taken jump training at the school of Khamisis outside Sidi bel-Abbes, were transferred from the 13th DBE to the 2nd BEP, the Bataillon Etrangere des Parachutistes. He had a feeling that Gus had been responsible for his assignment and having Sergent chef Hermann with them was just a stroke of bad luck.

1953 had all the earmarks of not being a good year for the French in Indochina. The French General Staff had not been able to pin the Viets down, and since "Operation Lorraine," the previous year, when thirty thousand men drove one hundred sixty kilometers into hardcore Viet Minh territory, there had been one set of mistakes after another.

They had killed more of the Viets than they had lost. But there was no way to make up their losses as easily as their opponents, since only regular army men could be sent to Indochina from France and, as the war dragged on, there was a decreasing number of young men volunteering for active duty. The General Staff had tried to make the indigenous forces loyal to them strong enough to hold the static defenses of cities and strong points and leave the French open for more mobile activities, but it had never fully worked out, due to a lack of transport and equipment. In one squad, there might be a mixture of German pistols. French rifles and American machine guns, a situation that sometimes made it difficult to cannibalize a weapon for parts or even to exchange ammo.

Gus agreed that Giap was a first rate general who made the most of his situation and doubted if the French could hold the country much longer. But, with the true spirit of the Legion, he remarked dryly, "Still, old friend, this the only war we have that's worth a damn now and, if we are lucky, it might be two or three more years before our little Asian friends kick our fat asses out of here. " He sighed deeply at the thought of losing a place as comfortable as this and having to return to the scant pleasures of North Africa.

Gus had served with the 2nd BEP ever since it had arrived in February of 49 and had made several combat drops in operations in South Annam and Cambodia. He had been sent back to Sidi bel Abbes twice for wounds, but each time, as soon as he was able to make his presence known, his unit commanders in Africa were more than glad to grant his request to leave their company and return to the Orient for another round of service with the 2nd BEP.

The 2nd BEP had been on the go since they'd first set foot in Indochina, being sent out on one operation after another, from Ke Sat to Dong Trieu, Nam Dinh and Kontum. There were battles at Hoa Binh and a dozen others whose names he couldn't recall anymore. Now there was this thing in the wind he had heard called "Hirondelle Operation." Just what it was he didn't know yet, but would within the week as soon as General Salan made up his mind.

Until then, they just wanted to take it easy and enjoy the pleasant weather of the north before the monsoons set in with the winter. Hanoi was a clean city, filled with temples of the hundred faiths of its peoples. Buddhist and Cao Dai sat side by side with the Catholic cathedrals of their colonizers. Everything in the country was touched with the special mixture that France always brought to its colonies, the blending of cultures from all its territories. Moslem Algerians and Moroccans, black Somalians and Thais mingled freely with Vietnamese of the Indigene battalions and the Europeans of every nation. Each brought a bit of its flavor to the simmering pot that was Southeast Asia.

Langer enjoyed the variety. The very differences made the country exciting and fresh. He only wished that he didn't have to pull guard duty with Gus at the former summer residence of a Tonkinese merchant who had been executed for paying blackmail money to the Viet Minh. To the merchant, the blackmail money meant that he could continue doing business as usual, not that he was a sympathizer with the communist cause – few wealthy merchants were. It wasn't that guard duty was that bad, but he knew this was one of the places where many Vietnamese went in on their feet and came out in sacks. It was not a pleasant house to spend a night in. The interrogators of the French intelligence teams and their Vietnamese counterparts could have learned nothing from the Spanish Inquisition of the pious Torquemada. Langer didn't like those that inflicted needless pain, no matter what their reason.

Colonel Thich hated them all. All these ugly foreigners who infested his country, draining it of its individuality, trying to force their ways on them, even to making French the official language in the schools.

The French could be beat. That was firmly believed. He had seen it done when the Japanese occupied the land. It had pleased him greatly to see the once high and mighty French perform kowtow to an Asian. Even if the Japanese were worse masters than the French, they were still Asians and had beaten the French and the British. If it hadn't been for the Americans, the forces of Imperial Japan would still be in power. But once they had gone, the French wanted to regain their favored status, making the rightful people of the land their servants and slaves.

This would not be tolerated. This was not the same Vietnam of 1941. This was a new time and the future was theirs, as was the future of all oppressed peoples who wore the yoke of colonialism on their necks. They would rise up in their millions and claim what was rightfully theirs, though the struggle took a hundred years. That was what they had that the colonialists could never deal with. They had history past, present and future on their side, and they would prevail. If not this year then the next, or the next, until they bled the French dry and sent them back to their own lands to leave Asia in peace.

In effect, the curfew did little to keep those with urgent business off the streets of Hanoi. A million flickers of light gave mute testimony to those who lay awake on their straw mats or sat behind tables graced with fine crystal and the best the vineyards of France had to offer. Those who concealed themselves in the shadows of the darkest places and moved only when they were certain that none could see them were the night stalkers of the city. Some were thieves or simply killers; others went through the night streets and alleys for more important purposes than stealing silver from the houses of rich foreign exporters or killing an unwary soldier. They were out to steal a nation and kill thousands in the process.

Thich was accompanied by his three special agents from the Hac Sa Black Snake section of his covert operations section in Hanoi. They were good steady men who knew their craft well. The four of them stood quietly in the doorway of a jeweler and watched the whitewashed front of the building where the French Security Police kept political prisoners of the utmost importance.

His sister was in there. That had been easy to find out. She had been taken there the same day that the attempt on his life had failed. He knew that if she had given him up to the enemy it had not been an easy thing for her to do. He was very familiar with the techniques the French would have had to use against her. No matter what she had done, she was his sister and he still loved her.

The entrance was secured by a mixed guard mount of two Vietnamese and two Legionnaires. Inside, there would be more, both Viet and French. Thich and his men knew every closet hall and cupboard in the house, where every man slept and every prisoner was kept. His sister was not in the basement. She was being held on the second floor in a room where the Tonkinese merchant had once entertained his mistresses and street women.

Thich idly wondered when he would have word of the scar faced one? For some reason he couldn't fathom, the man fascinated him. He felt a compulsion to look him straight in the face, eye to eye.

CHAPTER FIVE

Langer stood at the locked doorway leading to the rooms on the second floor. Below, in what had once been the cellar, Gus kept an idle eye on those prisoners who required the most "attention." It was quiet now. The guests were sleeping, trying to gain some strength for the next day's ordeal. For Gus, it made no difference whom he fought or why. As for the treatment of the Viet prisoners, as far as he was concerned, they weren't being treated too badly. If they had been in Russia, the first stage of an interrogation by the Conmmissars probably would have begun with a brass cartridge case being hammered into their kneecaps, just to get their attention. After that, they would have been treated to some definitive methods of interrogation.

Langer lit up a Gauloise, tearing the blue pack open to get one out, wishing he had some of the American Lucky Strikes instead. He preferred his station to that of Gus. Up here there were only three "guests" in residence. In the first rooms were two Vietnamese officers who had defected to the French, giving themselves up with many of their former comrades in exchange for amnesty, and the promise they would be sent from Vietnam to France, where they would be safe from their brothers. The other guest was Lin, the sister of Thich. Langer had seen her only once. Lin was a perfect example of the best that the women of Indochina had to offer. Tall for her race, Thick, soft, raven hair that hung to the middle of her back when let down. She was slim and well formed with high breasts and a proud, erect manner to her that gave instant notice when she would enter a room. She still carried herself like an aristocrat, but Langer could see it was not easy for her. Her almond shaped eyes were full of pain and the bruises on her face were not yet completely faded.

This was one of the worst parts of the business of war and revolution. He didn't like it. War should be between grown men, not women and children. It was difficult not to feel sympathy for one who looked so beautiful and frail, but he knew that she had been directly responsible for the deaths of several hundred French soldiers. The information she had passed on to her brother had killed the French soldiers as certainly as if she had pulled the trigger herself. Therefore, he had to consider her a combatant and a willing instrument of those he was fighting against. If this had been just a national movement for freedom, and not one taken over by the communists, he might have even fought on their side. But he was much too familiar with the communists and what happened to those they ruled not to resist them wherever and whenever he could. He had too many memories of Berlin and the Ukraine, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Estonia and Latvia, where soldiers and civilians by the tens of thousands had been butchered, women nailed to the doors of barns and children slung against walls with their brains smashed out. The communists of Southeast Asia were even more brutal than those of the Soviet Union. So, even though he could feel some slight sense of regret for the beautiful, fragile Lin, she was as guilty of the horrors her comrades in the Liberation front had inflicted on their own people as surely as was Ho Chi Minh, Giap, or her brilliant brother, Colonel Thich. He wondered if he would ever get another shot at him.

The Vietnamese sentries on duty with the French guards at the entrance to the villa had checked their watches several times in the last few minutes as their French counterparts traded lies about who was the best lover or fighter. The smaller Vietnamese soldiers merely smiled and bobbed their heads pleasantly at the banter, keeping one eye on the dark shadows across the street. A brief flicker of light came from one of the doorways at exactly 0300 hours, then winked out.

The Viets moved casually behind their French associates, talking to each other, laughing as if at some secret joke. The two Frenchmen never learned what the Viets were so amused about until it was too late. Bayonets made at the foundries of Lyon severed their vocal cords and carotid arteries. Before the two hit the ground, Thich and his three men were crossing the street. Silently, they slipped over the sandbag barrier and knelt down where they couldn't be seen by any watching eyes from inside the villa.

In hushed voices, Thich gave his orders to the sentries, who nodded in obedience to his wishes. They had waited a long time to be put to such service. From beneath his black tunic, Thich removed an oilcloth wrapped package as did his other men. Opening them, they removed four .45 caliber Colt automatic pistols. There was one for each of the men present, including Thich. The weapons looked strange, oddly long because of the silencers attached to the snouts of each of the heavy handguns. The .45 caliber pistol was preferred because the heavy slug was already subsonic and therefore much easier to silence than the faster rounds of the 9mm family or the Russian and Red Chinese 7.63mms.

The Mats 49s of the dead guards were taken and given to two of Thich's men, who quickly checked them out making certain there were rounds in the chambers and the weapons were ready to fire. They hung the submachine guns around their necks by the straps so the pieces hung in front of their stomachs, ready for use if needed. For the next few minutes they all hoped that the silenced .45s would be all that was required to accomplish their mission.

Thich pointed to the entrance of the villa. Inside the double doors were two more guards from the 2nd BEP, drinking coffee, bored with the dull routine of doing nothing more than trying to stay awake. The watch officer and sergeant of the guard were in what had once been the drawing room but was now converted over to a communications center. There they waited, taking turns walking the sentry posts, while one stood watch by the radio.

Lieutenant Henri Chauvin was on his first tour of duty in the Orient, having just arrived from Sidi bel Abbes two weeks before to serve as adjutant for Captain Villon.

The two Viets who had killed the Legionnaires at the sandbags left Thich and his three men there. They headed casually for the double doors of the mansion, their weapons shouldered. Entering the double doors they smiled at the Legionnaires like good, simpleminded coolies. One of them asked the time, a normal question for someone on guard duty who wanted to get off so he could get some sleep or go to his house where his wife was waiting.

"Quelle heure est-il?"

The Legionnaires automatically looked down at their watches. Before they had a chance to tell their smaller Asian allies the time, the Viets had blown off their faces. The heavy, slow slugs from the silenced .45 caliber pistols splattered the walls behind them with red-gray pulp. The rattle of the Legionnaires hitting the polished marble floor brought Lieutenant Chauvin from the communications room. Stepping out in the hallway, he started to ask what the noise was when his lower jaw was blown off. He would have screamed if the second shot hadn't removed his vocal cords and, in the process, a large portion of the spinal cord in the back of his neck. The sergeant of the guard, a twenty year veteran of the Legion, had his weapon coming up when both Viets emptied the remaining rounds in their pistols into his chest and face. Quickly one of them returned to the doorway and signaled for Thich and his men to come on in.

The black, pajama clad figures raced inside the mansion on silent sneaker clad feet. They all knew the layout of the house as if they had lived there for years. The door leading to the basement was the only way out for anyone downstairs. There was no one down there important enough for them to take the time to dispose of, so the door was securely barred from their side with an oak chair wedged against the doorknob. Whoever was on guard below would remain there. That left only the single guard upstairs and they were more than enough to take care of just one dumb Legion parachutist. Still, Thich took no chances. He left the two Viets in uniform behind to watch the door, taking with him only his three personal men to finish their mission.

The hallway was lit by a single lamp at each end. Langer stood near the first door, his back to the stairs. From his post he was not able to witness what had just occurred below him. He had heard some movement on the ground floor but attributed it to the regular guards. The thin shuffling of rubber soled feet on Thich carpets turned his head around in time to be met with the steel stock of a Mats 49 submachine gun. He went to his knees. It took two more strikes to knock him out. The only reason he had not been treated the same as the other Legionnaires was that Thich wanted to take at least one prisoner back. And a paratrooper from the 2nd BEP could provide valuable information. And if he was not mistaken, he had seen this one before, but he had no time to dwell on the matter. More important concerns were pressing him.

Thich nodded for his men to continue as they had been briefed. Each of them went to one of the doors where a guest was being detained. The .45s made short work of the locks. Only one thin cry of terror reached the hallway before it was silenced. Each of the guests had been terminated. They went to handcuff their prisoner, leaving the last room for Thich to deal with, the room where his sister was.

Her lock was blown off to permit him entry. From her room there was no cry of fear or terror. The interior was lit by a single lamp on her dresser. Thich entered and looked at the face of his sister. She stood in the center of the room, wearing blue silk pajamas which seemed to be a bit too large for her. Her hair was loose, hanging down to the small of her back as she waited for her brother's judgment.

It was a heavy sense of weariness that Thich felt as he looked at his sister. She had been with him from the beginning. Her advice and council had always been good and wise, and she had spared herself nothing. Not even her own flesh had been above the needs of the revolution. Now he had to make his decision. Life or death? Which would serve the party's needs the greatest?

Lin spoke softly, eyes looking straight at her brother. "You must make up your mind in a hurry. Soon the guard mount will be changed. You must be far from here by then."

Thich nodded. "I know exactly how long I have." There was no recrimination in his voice as he asked simply, "Why did you try to turn me over to them? Was it that you were not able to endure the torture, or was there another reason? I have to know before I can act."

Thich moved to sit where he could keep an eye on the doors and windows outside the room. His men were impatient to be gone. They didn't like this delay. There was always top much of a chance of things going wrong, something unexpected taking place.

Lin ran a hand through her hair, a slight tremor betraying the first indication that she was feeling anything akin to fear. "I have no excuse. I simply was not strong enough. They used drugs and pain with great expertise. I told them everything they wanted to know and would have told them more if it would have made them stop what they were doing to me."

Thich nodded in understanding. He knew full well that everyone had a breaking point and secret fears that once found would make the strongest of men betray their own blood.

It was a difficult thing to decide. What should he do? His self-questioning was interrupted by a crash from downstairs.

Gus had started to come up to see if he could get a cup of coffee and found the door barred. He was perhaps not brilliant, but he knew when something was wrong. Without hesitating, he hurled his two hundred and eighty pounds at the door, smashing it free of its hinges and locks. His Mats 49 was at the ready as he burst into the open. The bodies of Lieutenant Chauvin and the other sentries provided him with all the reason he needed to cut down the two Viets in front of him. One of them got off a single round which tugged at Gus's camouflage tunic before he ripped the Viet apart. The other Viet merely stared in shock during the split second that separated him from the living and the dead before his head was literally blown off. Gus wasted no time. Before their bodies hit the ground, he was bounding up the stairs yelling for Langer.

Thich had no more time for consideration of his sister's case. When her head turned to the sound of the firing below, he made his decision. Without her knowing his decision had been reached, he placed a carefully sighted bullet behind her left ear.

Gus had to pause to reload before reaching the top of the stairs. When he did, the combined fire from the raiders forced him back down to where he had some cover. Thich rejoined his men in the hallway. He had made a mistake and taken too long. Now they were trapped. There was no other way out except for the front doors. All the windows and exits on the top floor were barred. They would have to go out the front, and do it soon, before the relief guard made its appearance. He still had one card to play. The Legionnaire on the stairs had called out a name. Perhaps this man was his friend. If so, then perhaps they could strike a bargain. He yelled downstairs to Gus. "We have your friend up here. Fire one more shot and he dies."

Gus hesitated a moment before calling back to them. "If he dies, then so will you. You have to get past me and I'm not moving."

Stubborn swine, thought Thich before answering. "Let us come to an understanding. Let us go and I'll give you back your friend unharmed. There is nothing you can do for anyone else up here. They are all dead." Thich ordered one of his men to slap Langer into awareness, which he did with a great deal of pleasure. Bleeding from the mouth, Langer was pushed to the head of the staircase where Gus could see him. Langer was still groggy but he knew what was happening.

Gus yelled to him. "What should I do? Are you all right?" Langer told him, "Do as they say but keep back where they can't get a shot at you."

Gus cursed his luck and told Thich, "All right, you got a deal, but no tricks or I'll burn your ass, Comrade."

He moved back into the communications room, where he'd be able to keep an eye on the Viets as they left and still have some cover if they tried any shit on him.

Thich kept Langer in front of him, his pistol at the scar faced one's neck. Once outside in the dark, and away from the lights of the house, Gus yelled to them. "Let Langer go, you little bastards." There was no response.

Once in the clear, Thich had no intention of leaving the scar faced caporal behind. He had realized where he had seen him before, and like most Orientals, had a strange belief in fate and predestination. There had to be a reason why he had run into this man again so soon and he intended to find out what it was.

CHAPTER SIX

The truck carrying Thich and Langer rattled out of town, taking a narrow side road that turned onto one of the levees interlocking the rice paddies. This way they could bypass any roadblocks or security checks. Within two hours they were, for all practical purposes, outside the range of French authority and in a countryside controlled by the Viet Minh. Along their route were hidden small detachments of Viet Minh, whose job was to stop or delay any pursuit. Each unit waited for twenty minutes after the truck passed them before they faded back into their homes. They didn't know who was in the truck, but they had clear orders that they were to die before they let anyone following the vehicle pass.

Langer had been blindfolded before being put on the truck. Only his nose gave him any sense of where he might be. The pungent aroma of rice paddies didn't help much. There were paddies everywhere. Thich was in the front with the driver and his three men had the task of guarding their prize.

Thich tried to close his eyes but was unable to. The swaying of the truck as it wove in out, attempting to avoid soft shoulders and the worst of the potholes, made it impossible to sleep. Thich wondered if he would have forgiven his sister and taken her out of the mansion alive if the big fool from the basement hadn't burst out shooting. It was a heavy loss, one which hurt him greatly. The only thing he might have achieved from the act of killing his own sister was to remind the people that no one was safe from the vengeance of the party. Yes, the example made of his sister's death at the hands of her brother could be exploited to their advantage. He felt that she would be pleased that her death would now have some meaning to it.

The truck rolled onto a dirt road leaving the paddies behind. Langer heard the truck shifting gears as it started up a steep grade. The smell of the air changed; it was fresher and a touch cooler. Judging from how long they had been traveling, he thought it probable they were going up into the mountains bordering Laos, a known Viet Minh stronghold. If that were the case, it was going to be a bitch getting away. Be patient, he told himself. That was all he could do for now, be patient and wait until a chance presented itself.

It took all that day, until near sundown, before the truck at last stopped its lurching and grinding. Several times there had been short stops where he heard voices questioning the driver. Once he heard Thich's own voice, curt and sharp, chastising a sentry for being lax in his duties. Thich was obviously a tough little son of a bitch.

His guards showed little concern for his comfort. They hauled him out of the truck and he fell on his face, unable to catch himself with his hands cuffed behind his back. His mouth split open again. He made a mental note to get a good look at their faces in the event he was able to make a payback at a later date. His blindfold was not removed, nor were the cuffs. Instead, a rope was tied around his neck as if it were a leash being put on a recalcitrant dog. He was led away from the truck into the trees. Even with the blindfold he could sense a dimming of light. Soon it would be dark. He wondered if they were going to march all night or make a stop someplace and wait for dawn. He wished for the latter. Then they might release his hands in order for him to eat if they planned on feeding him.

The rope tugged him along. Several times he fell, stumbling over roots or vines lying along the trail that was leading them ever deeper into the strongholds of the Viet Minh. When this happened he was kicked, cursed at, and jerked back to his feet by his handlers. He was beginning to really develop a sincere dislike for those on the other end of his leash. He tried to keep a count of his steps for no other reason than it was something to keep his mind busy. But it did no good; he fell too many times and lost his count with each fall.

Thich called a halt to their day's travel after a march of four hours. They had reached a location where supplies were cached and a strong guard was kept on permanent duty. Langer was pushed to his knees and then shoved forward to fall several feet, again on his sore face. He was jerked roughly back to his knees as his blindfold was ripped off. The fall had been the Viets' way of getting him down the small entrance to one of their tunnel systems. Thich took the time to take another look at his prisoner. Odd, he thought. He could have sworn the man's lip had a deep cut in it. Now there was only the thin pale line of an old injury there. Curious, but he had no time for such idle speculations.

As he was hauled down the subterranean passageways, Langer was amazed at how intricate the Viets' tunnel networks were. More than once on other operations he had come across them. Some were like this one, designed to house perhaps fifty or sixty men and store supplies. Others had hospitals, with facilities for several hundred wounded. Some even had factories where they made munitions and quarters where they could house a couple of battalions comfortably.

Along the walls were sacks of rice, medicines, most of it French or Chinese, and some ammunition, nearly all of it being of Russian or Chinese manufacture. That meant the Viets were getting more standardized in their weaponry and relying less on captured or homemade stocks.

Ducking his head as he passed under supporting beams, he tried to take in everything, not knowing what might be useful to him in the future. The tunnels were not quite high enough for him to walk erect and were lit by a series of kerosene lanterns. He was placed, still handcuffed, into a small cubbyhole with a door made of tin sheeting. This was padlocked from the outside. His captors were relieved of watching him by the guard force at the tunnel site. These were not part time guerrillas, but full time regular soldiers in matching khaki uniforms and carrying SKS rifles from the Soviet Union. They were no amateurs, but they were typical lean, thin faced, with stringy muscles concealing strength that most Europeans would not have believed them capable of. Langer knew that in the field the Viets would easily outmarch the Europeans for the first couple of days. On the third day the Europeans would be even with them, and on the fourth they would be ahead. This was because of their diet. If the Viets had been raised on a western diet he doubted if anyone could have kept up with them or endure more hardships. He had to admire them, even if they were the enemy.

Three days passed without anyone coming for him or the cuffs being removed. Food was brought once a day as was water. He had to eat and drink as best he could without use of his hands. But Thich finally sent for him. Guards led him through a series of passageways to a larger room in the caves, obviously used as their headquarters. Field telephones were in evidence as well as three secretaries busily pounding out correspondence on machines that had been built shortly after World War One. Thich was just setting down the telephone as Langer was pushed into his presence.

Thich made a wry face at the odor emanating from the prisoner and saw the cuffs still holding Langer's hands behind his back. He barked a short order and the cuffs were removed. He indicated for Langer to take a seat on a straight backed cane chair.

"Caporal Langer." His French was perfect as he paused in his introductions to light up a thick bodied Chinese cigarette. "I apologize for your being kept under such primitive conditions and for those cuffs being left on you for so long. I assure you it was merely an oversight and we will do our best to make your stay with us as interesting as possible, if not more comfortable. Much of that will be determined by how our relationship develops and the degree of your willingness to cooperate." He offered Langer one of the acrid smelling cigarettes, which was accepted and lit for him by one of the guards in attendance.

Langer said nothing, just sucked the thick yellow smoke deep into his lungs, choking a bit in his effort to inhale the strong mixture. Thich smiled, nodding his head in agreement. "I know these are vile, but they are all we have right now, though I am expecting some of those very fine American cigarettes to be delivered to me soon. Then perhaps we will share one of them together under more amiable circumstances. Correct me if I am mistaken, but were you not in the party that attempted to ambush me earlier this month?"

Langer avoided the masochistic temptation to take another deep draw from the cigarette and nodded that it was so. He had been in the ambush party.

Thich bobbed his head, pleased that they had gotten off to such an auspicious start and his guest was not attempting useless lies so early in their conversation. "Good, good, Caporal Langer. I am really pleased that you seem to be an intelligent man. I believe that with a little understanding we may become great friends. Now tell me of yourself. I wish for you to tell me the story of your life from beginning to end and then, when you are taken from this place, you will be given more suitable quarters and paper and pen with which to write down your story."

Langer knew this tactic of getting people to speak about themselves. While it might seem harmless on the surface, it was a very effective tool in discovering where the weak chinks were in a man's personal armor. The story told verbally and the one written would be torn apart with the teller having to constantly explain each minor difference. Then each difference to the story would have to be rewritten from beginning to end, once, twice or a dozen times, each change bringing more questions to be answered. Besides, he knew that there was no way he could tell his life story without being thought mad.

Butting out his Chinese cigarette in an ashtray made from a 105 casing, he decided on his response to Thich's attempts to open him up. "I don't think that my story would help you very much, Comrade Thich. I am not a French national and my past is where it belongs, in the ashes of the Third Reich. So there is no past for me now other than my times in the Legion, and if you wish to know about that, l am sure that you have people who could gain access to the personal files of a lowly caporal with little difficulty. In addition, the technique of personal biographies you wish to use is very familiar to those who fought on the Eastern front. "

Thich grunted; he didn't like people being ahead of him, especially prisoners. He tried another approach. Taking on a more sinister aspect, his eyes narrowed to thin slits, his words heavy with warning. "There are other, less pleasant ways for me to question you, my friend. I would not enjoy using them, as the sight of blood and the sound of pain are not at all pleasing."

Langer laughed quietly, derisively as he slowly stood, ignoring the snouts of the guards' weapons as they locked in on his stocky form. Cautiously, he began to unbutton his tunic, saying to Thich: "I want to show you something, Comrade." He pulled open his tunic to expose his upper body to the light of the lamp. Scars on top of scars, wounds from shells, cuts, and fires covered nearly every millimeter of his muscled hide. Langer redid his buttons and sat back down. "Do you think you can do anything to me that has not already been done?"

Thich said nothing. The sight of the man's body was like a blast of ice water in his face. But perhaps that was why their destinies had brought them together. He believed Langer's response. From what he had seen there was little that he could do in the way of physical pain that the man had not already experienced. But then, there were other ways. Drugs, for example, lack of sleep. Constant lights and sound could sometimes break a man where pain failed. Again Langer beat him to the punch as if his thoughts had been read.

"Pentothal? Sensory deprivation or sensory overload? Perhaps, Comrade. But why would you go to all that trouble for a poor unimportant Legionnaire? That could take days if not weeks or months, and then I do not think you would believe the answers I gave you. Surely you have more important things to do than waste your time on a common caporal. "

Thich would have chewed his mustache if he'd had one. This ugly big nosed thing was a most infuriating man. He had to regain control of the interview. Rising from behind his table, he stood in front of Langer. "It seems that you are not as intelligent as I first thought. Do you not understand your situation? Do you think that your friends will try and rescue you? I assure you there will be no rescue. You are completely in our power, to do with as we please." Thich had dealt with enough prisoners to know the feelings that were normal to them when they were cut off from outside help, when they at last realized that they no longer had any control over their existence and could be put to death or tortured when their captors pleased. Few of them were defiant, and those that were usually called upon the Geneva Accords as their basis for refuge. When it was explained that the Viet Minh did not accept the document nor were they signatories to it, those who had looked to it, usually fell apart or at least adopted a familiar mold. This man did not take on either one of those aspects. There were very few just simply tough men, tough of mind and body, who would give you nothing, even force you to kill them. But this one was not even like that; he was in a class all by himself. Thich walked around him as a mongoose would a cobra. There was still something he had to put his finger on. But right now the man was right. He did not have time to waste interrogating a junior non-com. But in a few days he would make the time.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Returning to his dirt cell, Langer passed several more storage areas. It looked as if the Viet Minh were expanding the tunnels. He saw several labor gangs with shovels and wheelbarrows heading down a passage. There were the sounds of men moving about at all hours; it was apparent that in the tunnels there was no night or day so work could go on around the clock if desired. Beams were used to shore up crumbling sides and tin sheets set against the walls. All were covered with slogans such as: Vi dan tru chien dau (We fight for the people), or Chet Vinh Hon Song Nhuc (Honorable death rather than a shameful life). Not a bad line, thought Langer. He had heard worse in his time.

Thich did not return for three weeks. In that time no one spoke to him; he was left alone in the dark. The only light was that which came from the lanterns set on the walls of the tunnels and that bit of light crept through the cracks of the tin sheets which served as his cell door. Outside the door on a stool a guard sat around the clock with orders to shoot him if he made any trouble at all. Food was brought twice a day, usually no more than a bowl of pumpkin soup or a few handfuls of rice and half cooked greens of some kind. It wasn't much, but he wasn't being starved and it was probably not much less than the Viets ate themselves. It was enough to keep up most of his strength if he wasn't kept on the diet for too long. Apparently, Thich had left orders that no one was to harass or question him. Thich must have wanted that honor for himself, Langer reasoned. He definitely had the man's curiosity, and that was what he wanted, to keep Thich off balance until the Viet made a mistake. It was not yet time for him to make any kind of a move. For the time being he would just have to be patient. He still had no solid idea of where he was, but he had heard one of the guards mention the name of a river called the Ham Yun. He had passed over a small river by that name once before on an operation. If his memory was right, the river was in a valley named after a small village called Dien Bien Phu, about two hundred and fifty kilometers from Hanoi, near the Laotian border. That would be about right, if one calculated the amount of time it had taken them to reach the caves.

Thich left the staff meeting with General Giap feeling quite good about their progress of the last few months. Things were shaping up very nicely and they had made no serious blunders. The French were spread too thin and did not have enough in the way of air support or man power to do more than hold onto outposts, which left the countryside, especially after dark, to the Viet Minh. According to Giap, their forces now numbered over a hundred thousand regular soldiers, in six first rate divisions, with growing artillery support. Vital to their long range plans were the two hundred thousand regional and village militiamen. These could be called upon as the need arose to either conduct limited operations of their own or replace those who were killed in the regular forces. He could now call on more than twice the number of the total French expeditionary force.

Their basic tactic of wearing the enemy down and making them bleed from a thousand wounds was having its effect. By being able to pick when and where he wished to fight, Giap had made the French chase his forces from one end of the land to the other, from the Plain of Junks in Cochin China, to the limestone mountains of north Tonkin. In the swamps and marshes of the Mekong Delta and the heavily wooded hills of Annam, the Viet Minh had stung, nipped, and occasionally bitten the heels of the French.

He was feeling expansive now from the praise heaped upon him by Giap for the courage and resolution it had taken for him to make an example of his own sister. Giap had confirmed the value her death would have on any who might think to betray them. It proved to their friends, and enemies alike, that there were no favorites in their ranks who had immunity by reason of rank or birth. To all, this great act of sacrifice and pain on the part of Thich was uncontestable evidence of the party's fairness in all things.

By the time Thich was able to return to the tunnels to continue his questioning of Langer, "Operation Hirondelle" had been started and finished by the French, who'd dropped three parachute battalions on some of their bases near Long Son. Giap had refused the gambit and did not commit any of his main forces to an engagement. It was not yet time. He still needed to husband his strength a bit longer. He had learned his lesson the previous year when he had ruined one of his prized regular divisions while attacking Na San in the Black River valley. The French had been reinforced and supplied by air. They'd held out and he had lost an entire division. He knew he could have taken Na San, but the price for it was too high. There were a couple of other actions which General Navarre, the commander of French forces in Asia, thought might draw the Viets out into an open battle where they could be beaten in a conventional manner, but Giap refused all offers; he was patient and his sources, especially those of his loyal Comrade Thich, had whispered in his ear of a new French plan more to his liking. Navarre had believed that when the rains ended, Giap was going to launch a major operation from Laos. To guard against this, he decided to build an airhead in the border hills from which he would be able to interdict any such operation on the part of Giap. The location whispered for the proposed airhead was the valley of Dien Bien Phu.

If the French did as he expected, then this would be where he would at last commit his divisions in full strength for the telling blow against the colonialists. This was not to be like Na San. Here the prize would be worth any cost and here he would have his big guns. He was glad he had listened to the council of Comrade Thich and had not given in to the temptation to use his precious artillery battalions in lesser contests. The number of his guns, and the amount of munitions he had in reserve for them, would be his Queen in the next contest; and, as any good chess master knows, it is not wise to play your Queen too early in the game.

Huang Nguyen Thich was not overly fond of travel. But there was no other way for him to contact, and deal with, the number of agents in his control. Sometimes it was just not possible for one of his men to be away from their jobs for any length of time without the French getting suspicious. They were such fools anyway. They employed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese in their offices of government and trade, on the shipping docks, and inside their military installations. Cleaning women, cooks, houseboys, barbers, merchants and prostitutes all gathered information for him. A bit here, a rumor there, when put together with a hundred other seemingly unrelated items, gave him advance warning of what his enemies were going to do.

He often thought of himself as the master spider who spun hundreds of webs, webs for his flies to fall into. Now he wished to question further his scar faced fly in the tunnels above the valley of Dien Bien Phu. The man had not been far from his thoughts since their first meeting. He wished to find out the reason for his own fascination with the soldier. The man was of no import, merely a common thing who fought for hire, as were all the murderers of the Legion. Perhaps he could turn him over to his side, make him into a tool that he, Nguyen Thich, could use. The thought was tantalizing, but he suspected that he would not have any great success in that direction, not with one such as this. He did have some French who had willingly betrayed their own kind, but they were communists of the old school who had gone underground before the liberation of France. What was it they were called by the intelligence community? Moles. Yes! That's what they were. They stayed in their jobs and offices, or served in their regiments and divisions, until they received orders. He wished now that he was the one who was able to give them their orders, but that privilege was reserved for Moscow.

While he was away, the work on the mountain tunnels went on around the clock, their depth and sophistication growing greater with each cycle of the clock. When it was done it would be large enough to house thousands of men and their equipment. On his return there would be an important meeting held with all of his agents who could get free of their other duties to attend. Normally they would have met in their strongholds in the mountains around Bak An, which was to the north of Hanoi, but lately the French had stepped up their security operations in the region. Thich had no desire for any of his people to be caught in a random roundup.

It would be better for them to meet at the new safe site near the Laotian border. He valued his men highly. It had taken years to prepare and train them and they must not be wasted. They would be vital to the cause; even when the war was over they would be needed. It was up to them to keep the military informed of the possible course of future events. It was also up to them to weigh and judge the value of information, to eliminate by assassination, or torture those whose activities merited it. When the final victory was theirs, they would be the real controllers of the country and its people. Already they had acquired massive file cases on tens of thousands of their countrymen. These would ensure the party's success when they took power. He, Thich, knew who needed to be eliminated, re-educated or merely shipped to labor camps. There were others who could bring millions in gold into the coffers of the new regime, simply by permitting them to live and in some cases leave the country to join members of their families in France or elsewhere. Communists were frugal businessmen and practical ones. If an undesirable person was worth more alive than dead, then by all means sell him to the highest bidder.

Langer swore at the water seeping through the walls of his cell, turning it into a miniature quagmire. Every day at the same time, the rains came and with it the tunnels turned into damp, slimy, stinking pits. There were drainage ditches and holes to let the worst of the waters flow out to lower levels, but the rains came through the ceiling, seeping through cracks in the tin sheeting or wooden planks. The floors of the larger tunnels were covered with boards but his dirt hole had no such luxury; the ground was constantly wet and slimy. He took his boots off and set them up as high as he could in a niche that he had scratched out in one of the walls with a stone he'd found in the floor. After three weeks, his uniform had started to decay on his body, the seams rotting. Even the thick tough material of the pants and tunic began growing mold cultures of their own, which slowly dissolved the material. Even worse was the particularly stubborn breed of fungus, which had taken up residence in his beard. He felt that if it rained much more he would not have to worry about escaping; they'd never be able to find him. All that would be left in the cell would be a large piece of greenish gray slime with caporal stripes. Once every five or six days he was handcuffed and taken outside to stand in the rain and rinse off. This kept the worst of the rot away, but his hands and feet were still pale white, wrinkled, and bloated from the constant damp.

The only item of interest, other than the constant digging going on, was a steady stream of new faces and voices that he'd noticed in the tunnel in the last few days. Something was going on that was important. Peeking through the cracks he saw the new arrivals. In most cases they were civilians to whom the guards showed great respect. Something big was going on.

Thich arrived shortly after the afternoon rains had ceased. He noted immediately the improvements made in his absence and nodded approvingly to his subordinates before he went to his quarters to change into a clean, tan colored uniform, modeled in the Mao style. Once he had refreshed himself, he ordered that Langer be brought to him. Once more Langer stood before Thich. His appearance had deteriorated greatly since their last meeting. At first Thich thought about reprimanding the complex commandant, but quickly changed his mind. Perhaps the last weeks of discomfort had made his guest more pliable. However, the smell emanating from the Legionnaire proved too much. He sent him back out with orders for him to be given soap and clean clothes then returned to him in an hour. During Langer's absence, he held a short meeting with his cell leaders, stressing the necessity of their acquiring more intelligence about French troop movements: their supply capabilities, their numbers and types of vehicles and aircraft, and whether they were expecting to get any massive amounts of American aid. American aid to the French had been a sore spot with all the Viet Minh leaders since the day Japan had capitulated. This old sore was still eating at him when he returned for his meeting with Langer, who looked much improved, though a stubborn patch of fungus still stuck to his face.

Tea was ordered. Thich was going to try and reason with his prisoner to make him see the justice of their cause. He still didn't know why he held this compulsion to talk to the scar faced man. But he did! And who knew, there was always the chance, remote perhaps, but still a chance that he might be able to turn this one if he could find out where his weaknesses were hidden or what his dreams were.

He prided himself on knowledge of men and the things which made each what he was. Find the right key and anyone could be made to sell out his father, mother or country. What could it be that he could use to turn the Legionnaire? This man had been in the German Army. Perhaps he could find a common ground with him by making him aware that the Allies he once fought against were now the enemies of the Vietnamese people.

His thoughts were interrupted by Langer 's entrance into his office. Thich indicated he should sit. Sipping his steaming tea with both hands, he leaned back, lit a cigarette and offered one to Langer. "I have something to tell you that not many of your race or the world outside of these lands have heard. Then, I think, you will better understand why we must continue our struggle for freedom against the French colonialists, or any others who come to our land unbidden." Thich paused to see if he had his guest's attention. He did and continued on with his story.

"The last months of the Japanese occupation were a most confusing time with the shift in power bases taking place daily. The Japanese had disarmed all the French, who had been ruling in the name of the Vichy government. But once France went openly to the side of the Allies, the Japanese put most of their soldiers under barracks arrest and imposed curfews on all civilians. The Japanese puppet government of Premier Kim was a farce.

“The only true resistance to the Japanese came from the different nationalist groups, such as the Viet Minh, or the Hoa Hoa or Cao Dai. These and a dozen others all had one common goal: Liberation of their country from all foreigners. Beyond that, all the ideologies were much different. Only against the Japanese was there any cooperation, and that was seldom coordinated. Each group acted as it wished, without any central leadership, that is, until Ho Chi Minh returned and established the Central Committee of the Communist party and called for a People’s Congress where all views and opinions could be heard without fear. We of the Viet Minh were the best trained and organized. All groups knew they would have to deal with us at some point, for we had too much support from the peasants. Only we, of the Viet Minh, would be capable of maintaining order once the Japanese were thrown out. We never believed that the western powers would give our lands back to France.

"Time and again we made concessions to avoid civil war. We agreed to form a coalition government, where each political and religious faction would have a voice which would be fairly heard all this, when we already had control over the greatest part of the country. Hanoi was in our hands as was Saigon. Yet the Potsdam Conference of July 1945 gave us away like we were chattel.

"The real war began in Saigon when the British, your old enemies, came in and turned the control of the Saigon arsenal and the ports over to the French, who had come in with them bringing eighteen hundred men on the British ships from Calcutta. The English general, Gracey, ordered that all Vietnamese were to turn in their weapons and submit to French authority. He even ordered the Japanese, who he was supposed to have taken into custody, to assist the French in enforcing his demands, even to the point of firing on Vietnamese nationals who refused to obey his orders. The French and the English told the Japanese to kill Vietnamese!"

Thich 's voice rose to a nearly hysterical level, and then he fought to gain control of his emotions.

"We had no choice but to resist. After all the years we had been under the heel of foreign oppressors, we were not going to bow our necks again. This time we will fight and we will win. It is our destiny. You know that your masters have no rights in this land. Let them go home and the killing will stop at the same moment."

Thich continued in this vein, telling Langer of the things which had led to their being at this place at this time. He knew that Thich was speaking the truth as he saw it. In many points he agreed with him, but not on the ones that counted most. When Thich at last finished, he leaned back in his chair, brown eyes steady on the gray blue ones of the Legionnaire. "Now tell me, what do you think of what I have said? Do you believe me? If so, what does it mean to you?"

Langer took another smoke from the pack and tried not to choke as he inhaled the acrid fumes. `I believe that much of what you have said is true, and if it were not for one thing, I might even be on your side in this fight."

Thich was exultant; his words had struck home and had a tremendous effect on the scar faced soldier.

Langer butted out his cigarette before he finished what he was saying. "That one thing is, I hate communists! I know you are sincere in what you say and believe, so was Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini. You are all sincere men who have one thing in common besides your sincerity. You will lie, steal, cheat, kill, and mutilate for the sake of your cause. I have fought communists too long though to be taken in by a story such as yours. As I said, I'm sure you're telling me the truth. However, there are many shades of the truth; nothing is an absolute. When you say you would be masters in your own land, I think not. For every bullet or rifle the Russians or Chinese send to you there will be a price tag attached that will never be marked paid in full. The coalition government you say you want to form would last only until you had the power to remove the communists when they were no longer needed. Communists are pigs who eat their own and say it is for the greater good. As you also said, I too believe the French will not be here much longer, but maybe we can hurt you bad enough so you don't get to eat everything on the table. That's reason enough for me to fight. Or, to put it more simply, I just plain don't like you."

Thich was furious. To be mocked in his own quarters in a camp where he had hundreds of soldiers at his beck and call by this, this ugly thing!

When Langer was returned to his cell he had to be dragged down the hall. A beating with split canes of bamboo was worse than a cat o' nine tails. The bamboo could strip the meat from a man's back as handily as a straight razor. But they received little satisfaction from him for their efforts. The only sounds he made were involuntary grunts as the canes peeled the flesh away from his ribs and back. As he had told Thich, he'd endured much worse things in his time.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Gus had just about enough of Sergent chef Herman's bullshit. Since the raid on the mansion he had drawn every shit detail in the Legion and had been busted back to private again. Not that the loss of rank bothered him; he was used to that. It was Hermann. Now that Langer was gone, he felt he had more control over his company again and the company commander, Captain Sarrault, was on his side for a change. He would have preferred to have had Gus put in front of a firing squad but even he had to admit the big former Panzer man was a hell of a fighter, and handy to have around when things got tight. So the worst he could do was to make Gus's life as miserable as he could in every way. His latest ploy was to have a houseboy in his employ tell him of each and every time Gus visited his favorite whore at Madame Collette's house. It was one of the few such places that had been placed off limits to enlisted men, but Gus had a passion for a young thing of mixed French and Chinese blood. He just couldn't stay away from her, and every time Gus showed up to see her Hermann gave him just enough time to get in a compromising position then he would race up the stairs, pounding on the door, crying out for Gus to give himself up so he could be properly court martialed.

Gus had no desire to go on any more of the mine clearing details or experience any other such punishments that would be waiting for him if he was brought in. Therefore he had to take the only other course open to him and avoid the situation by jumping out of the second story window of the whorehouse into the rice paddy at its rear. This was usually done in varying stages of nudity. Either he was carrying his clothes on top of his head or wearing his pants and boots, which usually curled up at the toes and cracked when they dried. He began jumping right after Langer had been taken prisoner and by the next month, from landing in the same hole, he was up to his waist in the fragrant waters of the paddy.

Hermann would stand in the window with his whore and laugh at the sight of the naked, hairy back and buttocks wading through the waters enriched by human manure. Gus swore vengeance. He spent hours of each day plotting the best way to get back at Hermann. Death was too easy, though the thought of tying a fragmentation grenade to the sergent-chef's genitals did have a pleasing texture to it.

Gus screwed up his bushy eyebrows in deep concentration, straining to come up with something truly creative. In this attitude he resembled a monstrous camouflaged beetle. Doing his best to be analytical, he tried to put in order the things that Hermann liked best. He liked to be a bully, he liked his drink, and he had an ex-bar girl that he was keeping house with. He paid her bills and watched her like a hawk. Beyond being a bully and a drinker, the girl was the only thing Gus could think of that might become a proper payback. But how to get to her? He had hustled her when she was still working at Francine’s, before Hermann took her away and made her his private stock. Even then she wouldn't go to bed with him for any amount of money, saying, "I may be a whore but I have not gone down so far as to bed with apes!" That had come close to hurting his feelings.

Gus waited, believing in his luck and the basic justice of a man who has never done anyone any wrongs. The time would come; he merely had to be patient until fortune presented him with an opportunity to gain revenge.

It was not long before fate took a hand in Gus's problems. He was crossing the chopper pad when he caught Dominic Ciardello heading in the opposite direction. Ciardello was so pretty that he nearly turned Gus on. Black curly hair, dark eyes, long sensitive lashes and a body sculptured by Michelangelo.

Gus called to him: "Hey, Dominic, let's go get a beer. The treat's on me." He had a plan in mind which seemed even better when Dominic answered him.

"I can't. I've got to go to the dispensary and get a shot of penicillin."

Gus lit up like a Christmas tree. "Penicillin! My dear boy, you could not have by any chance contracted a social disorder?"

He nearly fainted with pleasure when Dominic spat back at him. "If you mean do I have the clap, yes, what's it to you?"

Gus gloated, thanking God for his gentle mercy, that now the Philistine was almost ready to be delivered into the hands of righteous retribution. Putting an arm the size of a normal man's thigh around the Italian's shoulder, he hugged him as gently as he could, making Dominic fear for his spine. "Dear boy, you and Uncle Gus have got to have a talk before you do anything foolish. Do you recall last month when our beloved Sergent chef Hermann gave you the extra duty for your being only thirty seconds late for roll call? And do you recall his gentle interests in your welfare when he made you take point on the last three patrols because of his love and affection for Italians? If you do, then I believe that fate has delivered you into my tender care for a mission that shall redeem both our honor and increase our fame. Come with me, my son. I have a small and, believe me, not unpleasant task for you to perform before you render your body over to the medics."

Gus immediately took Dominic with him downtown and even paid for the luxury of a three wheeled cyclo cab to haul them on their sacred mission to the house of Sergent chef Hermann's oriental Desdemona. After Hermann's girl got a look at the handsome, dashing Italian Legionnaire it took only a few seconds before they came to an understanding. A few francs changed hands, more as a matter of honor for her than anything else. After she got a look at Dominic and compared him to the insensitive brute she was living with, Gus thought she would have paid him if he had bargained a bit harder. But this was no time to be niggardly. He waited in a nearby bistro, sipping Pernod until Dominic returned from his mission with a decidedly pleased expression on his face. Together they returned to camp, Dominic to get his penicillin and Gus to wait patiently until the full fruits of his vengeance had time to mature to their full and burning glory. God, it was good to get even!

Three days later, while crossing the same chopper pad, Gus saw Hermann heading away from him He called out, "Sergent chef, a moment please!"

Hermann waited for him to catch up before giving him one of his normal looks of barely controlled loathing. He had never forgotten that day on the docks of Haiphong when Gus had embarrassed him. "What is it, Beidemann. I'm busy."

Gus took on a conciliatory aspect as he said with great sorrow in his voice, "Sergent chef, there is no need for you to speak harshly to me. I have merely come to offer you my condolences for your unfortunate condition."

Hermann looked confused, then leery as he snapped back, "What do you mean, my condition?"

Gus was barely able to control a hysterical giggle that tried to force its way out of his mouth. It took all of his self-control to keep an even tone as he looked sympathetically at Hermann. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry to hear you have the clap!"

Hermann snorted, "I don't have the clap, you oversized baboon!" and turned away, pissed that Gus should waste his time with such childish antics. He barely heard Gus snort, choke and gurgle out happily as he left, "Yes you do!"

Hermann chose to ignore that. The animal was merely trying to work on his mind.

The next couple of days were ones of pure joy for Gus. He waited for the inevitable moment of his triumph. It came on the morning of the sixth day after Dominic's liaison with Hermann's girl. Gus was in the mess hall having a small breakfast when Hermann entered, walked up behind Gus and hit him in the back of the head with one of the metal folding chairs at the table. Gus went down on the floor, although the blow had not bothered him at all. He was laughing as he saw Hermann 's face. Hermann screamed at him in fury, "How did you do it, you son of a bitch?" Gus never told him, not being one to involve a friend if he could avoid it, especially as he now had one other bit of unexpected pleasure. Hermann was busted down to sargent for striking a subordinate in public. It was an added bonus, which made Gus nearly forgive Hermann all his sins.

The only fly in Gus's pleasure was the constant nagging worry at the back of his mind about Langer. There had been no word on him from any of their sources. Langer was the nearest thing he'd ever had to a true friend, though he had never been able to get really close to the man. They had been through more crazy times together than most people would experience in a dozen lifetimes: the frozen fields of Russia, the great tank battles at Kursk and Kharkov, and a hundred other battles where, at the end, only they came out alive. All the rest of their crew were left behind to enrich the dark soil of Mother Russia with their flesh and their blood. That made a bond between them that few men would ever know. They had survived and Gus had never doubted that somewhere, sometime, Langer would once more present his scarred face. Gus sometimes thought about that face. Langer carried his age better than anyone he had ever known and wondered if Langer had not at some time had a plastic surgeon perform a face lift. He didn't look a day older than he did at the gates of Moscow. There was a timelessness to his former tank commander that did not lend itself to the thought of death. Langer would return. It was only a question of when. Until then, Gus would wait and carry on as always. Langer would not want him to languish away, physically or morally, by refusing his normal appetite for life.

Hermann was in a black, piss-filled mood. The Neanderthal had gotten to him. How, he didn't know. His girl had left, blaming him for giving her the clap. She said she would rather get the disease every day than spend one more minute with him.

He had lost a stripe and had been fined and humiliated, especially after he had hit Gus with the chair. The ape had picked him up like a sack of rice and thrown him across the mess hall, scattering trays and men like chaff. His face had been swollen for a week from the slap Gus had given him after heaving him across the room. The beast had not even been reprimanded, claiming that his actions were caused from the chair, which had hit his head leading to a momentary fit of irrationality. Though he knew of it, Captain Surault was not able to take into consideration the provocation given Hermann. Something like that could never be admitted. That was the only reason he had not busted Hermann all the way down, or taken action against Gus. He was after all a Frenchman with a proper Gallic sense of humor and justice.

After this tremendous success, Gus began to devote most of his energies toward one noble purpose. He was going to drive Hermann mad. By the gentle blood of Jesus, it was good to have a cause in life! Hermann noticed that Gus was smiling a lot more than usual when he was around. The gorilla would just grin through his thick loose lips, laugh obscenely and waddle off, mumbling to himself. It was a very uncomfortable feeling to see the beast do that. He felt as if he were on patrol and knew that a sniper had him in his sights but hadn't made up his mind whether to pull the trigger or not.

Then there began a series of accidents, which were rapidly forcing Hermann into a state of paranoia.

Once when they went up for a practice jump, somehow his static line had become unhooked. Hermann had fallen nearly five hundred feet before he was about to get his reserve chute open. Investigation revealed only that the static line hook had somehow become weakened to the point that the clasp had broken under the pull of the lines. Very unusual. The thing he didn't like most about it was just before that incident, Hermann had seen Gus in the company of a parachute rigger who Hermann had once busted. Could there be anything to that? Hermann began to drink a bit more and slept with a pistol in his hand. Gus began to make plans to see that Hermann didn't get too much sleep.

A dozen other events took place, all seemingly designed to make the life of Sargent Hermann miserable. Gus was never in better spirits, except for the emotional let-downs he experienced during the moments when he wondered when Langer was going to come back.

CHAPTER NINE

The time was now. Langer made up his mind to take the next opportunity to escape. The pain in his back receded but the memory of being bent over and whipped was worse than the pain had been. He had never believed in getting even. He wanted to collect some interest and couldn't do it while confined.

Two days after his beating, luck moved in his favor. During the peak of the daily rains, a flight of bombers happened to drop their load in the hills where the network of tunnels grew larger every day. One cluster of them struck the section where he was held, ripping off the top of a group of tunnels. The rain rushed in, flowing in dark muddy torrents where it drained off the hills. A torrent filled the caves, washing men and equipment away. Debris blocked up many of the drainage outlets backing up the waters. It was almost like being in a submarine whose steel sides had been breached by depth charges, letting in the ocean to drown those trapped inside.

The lights went out as the subterranean flood shorted out the generators or washed away the lanterns. The tin sheeting covering Langer's cell was swept away as were the guards. One of them had his throat slit by the sheet of tin as neatly as if a bayonet had been run across his larynx.

When the first stick of bombs struck, Langer had thought an earthquake had struck the hills. The earth heaved and rolled under him. Then he heard the explosions, followed by screams of panic and terror. Water burst into his cell. The force of it dragged him out turning him end over end. His hands tried to grab anything that could keep him from being pulled further into the tunnels as the tons of fluid sought the lowest levels of the network. Hitting a section of collapsed wall, he managed to dig his feet in, sinking his toes deep into the sides. His hands caught a grip on a section of beams that had fallen. Bracing himself against the torrent he raised his face above the thick clay saturated liquid to gasp for air. Stubbornly he held his ground knowing he was near the top levels of the tunnels. If he could just hold on, the waters would pass him by. Then he could try for the surface and freedom.

Three bodies swept by him. One of them reached out a hand to him and grasped his sleeve. Eyes filled with terror, he pleaded for help. Langer hit him in the face to get rid of him. The man's screams were silenced by the waters filling his mouth as he was sucked under and carried through a break in the walls down to the next level. As far as four levels below men tried to find ways out but the exits were all above them except for a few small openings cut in the sides of the mountain for drainage or escape. Their bodies quickly blocked these small exits. Only those on the uppermost levels escaped. Their tunnels were higher up than those opened by the bombs. They could do nothing to help their comrades below. One of the upper tunnel cells fell and collapsed as its foundations on the next level were swept away. Eleven of Thich's agents would never return to their jobs.

Thich and a squad of regular Viet Minh decided to take their chances on the bombs outside rather than stay where the floor under their feet could be removed in the blink of an eye. They followed after their leader as he broke out into the open. Running to get away from the tunnels, he headed up higher to where the foundation of the earth was more secure. His men who went with him were greatly relieved that Comrade Thich had enough sense to get out of the watery grave. The rains beating down on them were a welcomed relief in comparison to the panic they had felt at the thought of being drowned in the dark caverns below.

The pressure against Langer's body eased. The worst of the flood was passing as fast as it had begun. Pushing himself forward, he let the current against him lead him to the outside. All along the tunnel were the soggy remains of men who'd died, their bodies trapped by fallen beams or crates of military equipment. A Russian Tokarev Model 40 sniper's rifle with a scope was wedged between two crates of canned food. He pulled the weapon loose, took a quick look at it and checked the bolt. It was loaded and the action worked fine. Fifty feet farther down the tunnel he found the body of the man who had probably owned the rifle. Two bandoliers of ammunition hung from the corpse's shoulders. Langer wasn't able to get the body free from whatever it was that held it down. The face was still under a foot of water and muck. Taking the man's bayonet, he cut away the straps of the bandoliers and threw them over his shoulders. Now let them try to get him back!

His head was down, looking at the floor of the tunnel, when a rush of water went down his neck. Looking up he saw a hole in the roof of the tunnel. A way out! Dragging over some crates he erected a ladder to climb up to where he could get a grip on a tree root. Grunting and spitting out water that poured onto his face, he inched his way up until he had a hand on the trunk of a sapling. He waited a moment to catch his breath before giving a last effort to free his body from the roof of the tunnel. He was in the open. The bombs had stopped. It wouldn't be long before the Viets got their shit back together and he wanted to be long gone by then.

Hunched over, he headed for the brush and started downhill, not knowing which side of the mountain he was on; but he knew he had to get to low ground to get away. His attempt to escape undetected was interrupted by a burst of fire from a Ppsh 41, the bullets cutting down several branches over his head. He hit the ground, whipping his body around so that he faced the direction from which the shots had come.

Thich was furious. Not only had the storm caused severe damage, ruining the work of months and taking many lives, but now his prisoner was escaping. Angrily, he ordered his troops to stop him Langer settled back and not knowing how the sights were set on the sniper's rifle, aimed for the belly of the soldier with the Ppsh 41. Squeezing off a single shot he blew the man's left lung out. The bullet exited near the sixth dorsal vertebra of the man's spine between the shoulder blades. The weapon was sighted, he estimated, for five hundred yards and was hitting a bit to the left and high, striking several inches above where he'd been aiming. Return fire began to get too heavy. He couldn't hang around or they would be sure to get him, especially since more survivors were coming out of the tunnels to help. Cursing his luck, he took a quick snap shot at Thich who screamed and went down. Back crawling, until he was certain he was out of sight, he rolled over on to his feet and began a blind run downhill, ignoring the branches and vines that tried to snare him. He slipped and slid on the soggy earth, sliding down patches of slick grass like a kid on a sled. The guards normally on duty around the perimeter of the mountain were still in their holes hiding from the rain and the bombs. One thought he heard steps go past his hole but was too stunned from a near miss to bother looking.

Checking the sky, Langer knew that if he could just stay in front of them for another hour he would have a good chance to lose them in the coming darkness. One more hour. He hoped that he'd blown Thich away. The intelligence officer had been hit. That he knew, but how bad was something else.

The scope on the rifle was probably out of kilter after being swept along in the tunnel. He'd have to re-sight it when he got a chance.

Chest aching from the unaccustomed strain, he kept ahead of his pursuers, who were not too anxious to close with him after they'd lost two more men to single shots. Thich was enraged. Langer's bullet had burned a furrow on the inside of his left thigh, nearly removing a portion of his manhood. As more men came out of the tunnels, he sent them down the mountain to aid in either killing or returning his captive. He wanted Langer and wanted him badly. This was now a very personal matter. Thich felt that if he did not do something to remove the Legionnaire from his existence, the man would always be a curse to him. There were forces in the universe that drew men together and not always for the good. Langer must be killed, of that he was certain. As soon as his wound was treated, he followed after the hunters, refusing the offer of a branch to use as a crutch. His wound was not that severe, merely painful and stiff. He would be in at the kill or capture.

Gasping, Langer reached the base of the mountain, finding himself in a mist shrouded valley. With the approaching nightfall, he had no idea of which way to head. Plunging into thigh deep waters, he headed into a marsh fed by the springs and rivulets that drained off the mountains on either side of him. With the dark came a chill that set into his muscles and bones making every effort to take another step increasingly difficult. The weeks of his confinement had cost him much in muscle tone. They were not used to this sudden demand on them. He knew that soon he would have to find a place to rest, in spite of the men on his trail.

The rains had widened the marsh he was in, making it into a small lake with many sink holes where an unwary step could drop a man into a hole ten or more feet in depth. It had become a pit that could be a watery tomb for any who moved too fast in the dark.

A cry of terror far behind him said that one or more of the Viets had just found their way to one of the hidden sink holes. Good! Now maybe they would break off the chase, leaving him to the marsh. Wearily he searched the night sky. There was no moon, and with a layer of fog resting over the marsh, no stars either. Finding a patch of ground higher than the waters, he made a bed in a cluster of green bamboo the height of two tall men. It would be a cold camp, with no fire to ease the ache in his bones or dry what remained of his uniform. For the first time, as he felt along his body checking for injuries, he became aware that his feet were badly torn. He cursed himself for being a fool and forgetting to get his boots, or at least something he could have used to cover his swollen appendages with. It was a little late to worry about that now. Perhaps tomorrow he'd be able to do something about it. Roughly guessing at the time, he thought it was no more than eighteen hundred hours. The sun had been down for two hours or more. He felt as if he had been running for weeks.

Curling up, using his knees to warm his chest and stomach, he set the rifle close at hand, leaning it against a clump of the bamboo. In these waist deep waters he wasn't too concerned about being snuck up on: He would hear anyone before they got too close to him. For now, he needed the rest more than anything else. Letting his eyes close, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, ignoring the chill and wet earth he rested on. He slept the light, razor edged sleep of the soldier whose ears listen though the thoughts are far away... Faraway, where the sounds of battle were those of swords, spears, and armor, where men stood face to face hacking at each other with edged weapons, and the rumble of man-made thunder was yet long centuries away. Huns and Mongols, Tartars and Vikings, Castillian and Burgundian knights on huge armored mounts, all of them died for some idea of obscure honor. Great fleets of ships with bronze prows, powered by the arms and backs of slaves who strained at the oars, driven by the slavemaster's lash until their hearts burst under the strain. In his mind were all the wars of the last two thousand years. There were rivers and oceans of blood, and mountains of dead human flesh that had once faced him in mortal combat. He knew them all. Attila was no stranger, nor was the great Augustus or Tiberius. Nero, he had seen face to face, and he had watched the burning of Rome, as he had the first sacking of it by Alaric the Visigoth. On both sides of the Great Wall of China he had marched and fought. Each step, each battle, doing no more than pushing him closer to the next one. Even in his sleep, his feet still ached from the horrible cold of Russia as he followed in the wake of the remnants of the dying army of Imperial Napoleon. Each pain, each bit of suffering, had to be tolerated on its own. The only relief for him was that he knew it would eventually pass, as it always had. Pain would leave him for a time and he would endure till the next...

Thich stood at the edge of the marsh, sweeping a battery powered lantern over the dark, straining his eyes to peer through the reeds as if he thought by looking hard enough he would be able to penetrate past the range of his light. He knew this region well and already had men spreading out around its perimeters to isolate the five square miles of reeds and mire from the outside world. Somewhere inside there, he was certain they would find Langer. With the dawn the hunt would begin in earnest. His men would close in from all sides, in the same manner as when Indians used beaters to chase the tiger into the sights of the white hunter. He would pick his spot and wait for the quarry to come to him.

Thich stayed by the edge of the marsh. A lean to had been built for him. The rest of the Viets made out the best they could from their posts around the water's edge. The only fire was that of their leader who sat alone waiting for the dawn, anticipation building in him. He was, for the first time, beginning to understand the fascination the British had for chasing a fox with a pack of hounds. The Legionnaire was the fox, his soldiers were the hounds, and he would ride them until they brought the fox to bay.

An hour before dawn, Thich sent in the first line of his beaters. He had nearly two hundred men with whom to flush his prey. Left on the banks within sight of each other, more soldiers stood, weapons at the ready, to prevent Langer from escaping the marsh and getting back into the jungle.

Langer's eyes snapped open, focusing instantly even in the dark. A small gurgling sound had drifted over the marsh, followed by a spontaneous curse from a Viet who had found a sink hole. Mist still sat on the waters of the marsh, floating above it in gray thick wisps that made everything appear to move in eerie gray images. A thin sheen of light rode at the top of the haze where dawn was cresting the ridge of mountains. It would be light soon. He knew he would still have an hour, perhaps two, before the sun burned off the mist and exposed the marsh. By then he would have to be gone. Hanging the rifle by its strap at a slant across his back, he retied the ends of the bandoliers and hung them around his waist. He didn't want to use the rifle if he didn't have to. It would draw too much attention to his location. This was going to have to be handled much more quietly. Taking the bayonet in his right hand, he slid belly first into the waters. Skin rippling at the chill of the marsh, he let his weight take him under to where only his eyes were above the fluid.

Slowly, easily, he pushed forward with his feet, the weight of the rifle and bandoliers acting like the weights on a scuba diver's belt.

A crocodile could not have done much better as he gently, steadily, pushed himself forward, still not knowing which side of the marsh he was going toward. It didn't make much difference as long as he got out. A cough from a Viet gave him some direction and reminded him that he needed something to cover his feet with. Well, he thought, first come, first served. The mist resting on his head, he moved in the direction of the cough, knowing the Viets would probably expect him to be holed up somewhere hoping they would pass him by in the fog. Not this time. If he was going to get out he would have to be the one who started things. From all around him he began to make out different noises: feet being sucked at by mud, water dripping from men's bodies. Even the sound of their breathing reached him. There were a lot of those sons of bitches out there looking for him. He wondered if Thich was with them, or had he blown the bastard away?

Comrade Thich had at last entered the marsh himself. He was carrying one of the three radios available to him. The rest had been damaged by the flood in the tunnels and had to be repaired. Still, with these he would have some semblance of control over his search parties. He would have Langer one way or another, of that he was certain. He would see the man again. It was his destiny.

CHAPTER TEN

Langer zeroed in on his target. A small boned Viet with a bad case of overbite and lack of confidence was pushing his way through a clump of reeds when Langer rose up in front of him out of the marsh grass. The diminutive Vietnamese tried desperately to find a scream somewhere in his throat, but the best he came up with was a squeak. He was so pathetic that Langer didn't have the heart to kill him. Instead, he grabbed the little man by the throat and gently applied enough pressure to give the terrified Viet the blessing of unconsciousness. Langer lifted the small body up onto a clump of reeds where the little bastard wouldn't sink in the water and drown. All he took from the man was his jacket. It was too small for him to wear, but he could tear it up later to make wrappings for his feet. The man's rifle he let go. He preferred the one he had to the shorter barreled Moisin Nagant.

Slipping back to where only his nose and eyes were above the surface he pushed on, leaving behind him a wake of bubbles where his feet had disturbed the sediment below. The sound of men in the distance became more frequent. Pausing near the roots of a mango tree, he stopped to listen, the water lapping around his lips. From his left, a figure came toward him, a darker figure than the gray of the mist. He lowered himself down even further. Behind the lead figure came two others, all in water up to their waist, weapons held high to keep them dry. They were going to walk right over him if they didn't see him first. Sucking in a deep breath, he went under. Letting the dark waters cover him, he used the roots of the tree and the weight of his gear to hold him under. It seemed much longer, but could have been no more than ten or twenty seconds before a knee bumped his nose, nearly breaking it. He would have preferred to let them pass but the blow to his face forced him to rise, spitting water out of his mouth, his nose bleeding in streams. He rose right in the face of the man who had unwittingly kneed him. When he came up it was with the bayonet in his hand, which was already reaching out for the soft belly of the Viet. There had been no time for him to do anything else. Twisting the thick blade to break it loose of the stomach muscles which had clamped around it, he threw the man to one side and went after the next, who had two seconds more life than his now draining comrade. He screamed once before the blade tore open his throat. The last man had time to lower his rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger. He had made one fatal error. He had forgotten to take the safety off. Even as his fingers clumsily tried to move the small lever, Langer's bayonet was in the air. He had made a strong, sure overhand throw from a distance of less than eight feet. The blade didn't hit square on target. It went through the bones of the sternum and lodged firmly in the left lung severing a large artery in the process. Langer ripped out the blade as he passed over the Viet's sinking corpse, pushing the body to the bottom and holding it with one foot while he worked the blade free of the bone. The Viet's chest let loose of its last breath through the hole the bayonet head made, setting free a stream of bubbles to merge with the marsh gases.

The second man's scream had blown things and the sun was now visible as a hazy orb in the east. Langer wasted no time on the dead, or in trying to recover his blade. He sunk back into the marsh and half swam half walked in the direction from which the Viets had come. That had to be the way out and, if he could get past the line of men searching the marsh for him, he would have a chance to break clear and make a run for it.

Getting as low as he could he swam under the surface of the marsh, the waters dark and muddy from the rains. He rose to get a breath then went under again, using the roots of trees or bunches of the high strong reed grass to propel his body forward. Several times he had to crawl over spots where he was exposed for a few seconds, but then he slid back into the mire once more and was lost to sight. The only way anyone could have seen him would have been to step on him as their dead comrade had done.

At last he had to rest. He lay on his back with only his nose above the surface so he could breathe normally for a while and feed his air starved system. Rising up a bit more, he listened. The sounds of pursuit were all behind him. He was nearly in the clear. Rolling over to his stomach, he looked to his front. Just past a clump of old bamboo, as thick as a man's biceps and yellow with age, he could see the edge of the marsh, and only a hundred feet beyond that, the edge of the tree line. Once there, they would play hell catching him.

Thich had turned back to land. He was no infantryman to wade through muck like a peasant. Besides, he had an idea that his quarry had slipped through their net. Three dead men and one still unconscious were mute testimony that he was somewhere close. If he had been the fox, he would have doubled back after creating an opening in the line. From his radio he received no further word of any contact, only that two more men had drowned in sink holes. Vietnamese were notoriously bad swimmers and Thich was no exception.

Langer was just coming out of the marsh, dripping mud and moss from his body and face, as Thich reached the shore line only a few steps ahead of him. He was concealed from view by the trunks of a cluster of trees.

Langer stopped in his tracks as he heard the sucking sound of water filled boots squeaking just to his left. He leaned against a tree as Thich stepped past him. Langer grinned from ear to ear. This was too good to be true. He had the little swine for sure this time. Thich turned just in time to see Langer rushing at him, bayonet held low and to the front, going for his gut. He shrieked in terror and fell over backwards. His scream brought rifles to the shoulders of two of his soldiers standing in the tree line. One fired from the hip, nearly hitting Thich. It was enough to make Langer break his stride and roll away without reaching his target. Not even having time to curse his luck, he rolled, crawled and scrambled on his belly into the brush at the base of the trees. With regret, he gave Thich one last look and scuttled away into the jungle. Next time.

Thich crawled on his own belly to the safety of his men, beating at his radio, yelling into it for everyone to come back; he needed protection. This was the third time the big nosed foreigner had nearly killed him. From all over, Viet Minh troops responded to his call.

Langer took off, trying to gain ground. He would have only a few minutes before they were after him again, and he needed every second. As he ran he took the Tokarev Model 40 sniper's rifle from his shoulder. With fumbling, wet, wrinkled fingers he opened up the small metal latch in the butt plate. Inside he knew he'd find what he needed, a cleaning kit and a small tube of oil. A trained sniper would always have the items needed for its maintenance on hand. While on the run, he swabbed out the barrel and oiled the action, working it to make sure there would be no stoppages when he needed it. Refilling the magazine, he felt a bit better. Now he had something to fight back with at a distance. He'd been through the German army's sniper school and knew how to use the weapon to its maximum potential. His biggest worry was the telescopic sight. The treatment it had recently received couldn't have done it any good. Halting for just enough time to raise the weapon to his shoulder, he looked through the sight and grunted; he was pleased. The sight looked okay, no water in it. Tearing a piece of cloth from the Viet 's tunic he had taken he carefully wiped down the lenses of the scope with the cleanest piece he could find. Then he wiped the rest of the weapon, using a touch of oil from the tube in the butt plate. Next he used the remainder of the tunic to wrap around his feet, giving them at least a minimum of protection. By this time they were pale, bloated looking things with open cuts that no longer bled.

This was probably the only chance he'd have to sight the rifle. He measured off twenty five meters after making a mark on the trunk of a tree. Quickly, with practiced hands, he fired once, checked the hit and adjusted the sight for a bit lower and to the right. Another shot and he was on the money, hitting his mark with the sights adjusted for three hundred meters. He didn't like doing it, but the Viets already had a good idea of which way he was heading and he would need to know that his weapon functioned properly if they caught up to him. Testing done, he moved back into the brush, keeping his face to the rising sun.

The time, as near as he could figure, was now around 0900 hours. With his back to the west, he headed away from the mountains around the valley of Dien Bien Phu. Settling into a steady kilometer eating pace, he took the calculated risk of staying on a trail in order to make time. If he had stayed in the brush the Viets would have probably gotten in front of him. Moving without stopping, he ignored the growling in his gut. But he was able to do something about his thirst by hacking off a section of old bamboo at the joint. Inside the hollow of the tube was water that had seeped in during the rains. There was more than enough bamboo to take care of that problem, but he was still hungrier than shit and there was no time to stop and look for food.

When he could go no further, he picked out a spot where he'd have a clear field of fire covering the way he had come and the way he was heading. To his rear was heavy jungle and brush. That would be his way out if he had to use it. In the brush he was the equal of most men, and the Viets, for all their propaganda, were no better in the brush than were the French. Most of them had come from cities and villages and, like the French, had to learn to use the jungle. The ones to watch were the Montagnards, the hill peoples of the Muong, Meo, Thai and the tribes farther to the south, the Djarai, Bihnar, Rhade and Sedang. The Montagnards of Indochina were much like the Indians of America. There were dozens of sub tribal groupings that considered the tribe next to them to be complete foreigners, as much, if not more than they did the French or the Vietnamese. Some were for the Viet Minh, who promised them an autonomous republic once the colonialists were kicked out. Others sided with the French because they didn't trust, or simply hated, the Viets who had once hunted them like game animals. The Vietnamese word for them was Moi, meaning animal or savage. They were usually a bit taller than the Viets and more strongly built. But most of them were aboriginal in their life styles and cultures. They worshipped the spirits of the fields and streams, certain rocks and mountains, and the spirits of their ancestors. They hunted with homemade crossbows and spears.

Langer was just thinking about them when the point man for the Viet Minh hunters came into view on the same path he had been taking. He wondered how they had gotten onto him so fast, then saw the man on point squat on his haunches and run his hand over the ground. The tracker wore a khaki shirt like the Viets, but he was naked from the waist down except for a red and black loincloth. In his hand, he carried one of the native crossbows that fired bamboo arrows. Somewhere, the Viets had picked up a pet Montagnand to scout for them and it looked like the bastard was doing a damned fine job of it. Probably the best thing he had going for him was that he had gone further down the trail before cutting back to this spot. They would have to cross the clearing a good hundred meters before they came to where he had left the trail. That'd be when he'd take them.

Regretfully, he knew his first hit would have to be the Montagnard. He liked them, but he couldn't afford to let this one live and lead the Viets to him. He'd have to die.

Sliding back on his belly, he moved to where some overhanging branches would provide him with eye relief. Resting the barrel of the Tokarev on a log, he got ready. When he cut loose on them they would be about four hundred meters distant. He knew this because he had paced off the distance when he'd left the trail. Then, once he had taken up his position, he had sighted on a tree stump about the height of a man from the waist to the top of the head. The way the target set in his scope between the stadia marks confirmed his judgment.

Behind the Montagnard, the rest of the hunters came in single file. No flankers out! That would have taken too much time and they knew that their guide would lead them to their prey.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Adjusting his body behind the Tokarev rifle, he waited for the Viets following the Montagnard scout to enter the clearing. Five, ten, eleven counting the Montagnard. Take it easy, give them time, he thought; as he sighted on the Montagnard. Soon now, just as he reaches the spot where I left the trail and squatted down to check it out.

The damp ground made the Montagnard's job of tracking easy. Even with the rags around his feet Langer 's weight made easy signs to follow for one raised in the jungle. He was near the spot. The sun was directly overhead, its rays beating down on the damp earth as heat waves rose over the field between him and the trail. To check the wind, he traversed the scope until the heat waves moved straight up with no lateral motion. That meant there wasn't enough wind for him to worry about making any compensation for his shot. It was straight on. He brought the scope over until the body of the Montagnard filled the sight picture. Gently, steadily, he began to take up the slack on the trigger.

Raising his hand with the crossbow in it, the Montagnard signaled for the men behind him to halt. The trail had stopped. That meant his quarry had jumped off the trail, either to the left or right. Taking his time, he looked both ways then moved to where the grass began. Squatting on his haunches on the right side of the trail, he looked at the grass. The path Langer had taken was invisible to the untrained eyes of the Viets, but to those of the savage the way was clear. The manner in which small patches of damp grass bent in a different direction than the rest told the story. His eyes followed the trail across the field to the trees. A brief flicker of light from the shadows at the tree line brought a grunt of satisfaction. At the same moment his heart was exploded inside of him by a 7.63 mm bullet, knocking him flat on his back across the trail.

Langer held his sight for just long enough to make certain of his strike, then moved down the line. The Viets had hit the deck on both sides of the trail. A hand rose above the ground and began to point across the field in his direction. Someone was giving orders. That would be his next hit. Shifting his body for the new target, he focused on the place where the arm had risen up. Following the sight down, he brought into the picture the shape of a homemade Viet pith helmet. The face was hidden by grass. Calculating the distance, he aimed where he thought the chin should be. Even if he was off a bit he would be close enough to make the man get up; when he did he'd have him. Taking a breath, he took up the slack in the trigger once more then let loose his breath to its normal point of exhalation and squeezed off his shot. The bullet did better than he'd expected it to. The round caught the Viet just to the left of his nose. It entered his body lengthwise and then traveled down through the spinal cord. The contact with bone made the course of the round erratic. When the flattened slug finally stopped it was resting under the floating rib on the man's right side. It had passed through the lungs, the aorta, and a number of arteries, turning the inside of his chest cavity into a mass of thick, black red jelly.

Inaccurate fire came in his general direction. They hadn't spotted his position yet, but they were trying to keep him down until they did. He knew he'd have to go soon, before they got organized and moved out, flanking him. Rolling over to where he was further back under the tree and in the dark of the shadows, he came up to his knee and rested his weight on the heel of his right foot. Using the rifle strap to stabilize the weapon, he fired twice more. One hit, one miss. It was time to get hat and get gone. Firing off the rest of the six rounds remaining in the magazine, he took off, moving in a half circle around the edge of the tree line where he'd be outside for the view of the Viets, even if they sent out any flankers. Then he came around to where he had a view of his now vacant site in the tree line. Lying down in a ditch dug by the rains, he reloaded and waited, watching the Viets as they began to fan out across the clearing, moving slowly, ready to hit the ground if any more shots came from the tree line.

From where he lay in the ditch, the Viets were on a staggered horizontal line to him. This time there would be no fancy shooting. Rather than kill any of them, he wanted to wound enough men so that they would have to give up the chase to take care of them. They were now about two hundred meters away and if he moved fast he might be able to get two or three of them before they could react. He picked the man farthest behind the line. Sighting on the man's left thigh he fired. Not waiting to see if his target went down, he moved down the line, emptying the magazine once more, then backed away on his belly to where he could get to his knees and take off again. This time he would stay to the sides of the trail and head west. Content with the work he had done, he was sure the Viets would not be too anxious to continue their pursuit. Not if they had any sense, they wouldn't.

Of those on the field, only one was dead. The man he had shot first and one other went down with wounds. The other had walked into a gut shot.

Body low, weapon to the front, Langer moved away from his ambush, satisfied with the day's work. A thorn vine whipped at his face, striking him across the bridge of the nose laying it open. The pain made his eyes water, blinding him for just a second. That's all it took. In that instant, when he couldn't see, the world around him exploded. A hammer hit his chest knocking him clear off his feet, throwing his body back against a tree. Then another hit! He could hear the dull thud of the bullets ripping into him but the pain was distant, far away. His legs weren't there anymore. They too were far away as if they belonged to someone else. The sniper's rifle fell from lax fingers that hadn't the strength to hold the nine pounds any longer. Blood filled his mouth, running down his ragged tunic. He went first to his knees in slow motion as the strength left him. Then, ever so slowly, he twisted half around, falling face down to the earth, mouth and eyes open.

The muzzle of an American made M1 carbine prodded the face of the Legionnaire lying crumpled on the spongy floor of the forest. The Chung Ui in charge of the twelve man Viet Minh patrol that had come to investigate the sounds of firing was jerked away from his kill by a cry of rage and pain from the clearing. Comrade Commissar Thich was stumbling toward him, pistol in his hand, a belt tied around his thigh to stop the bleeding. The sight of Thich wounded and furious scared the young lieutenant from Da Nang more than anything the French had ever hit him with.

"Did you get him? Is the swine dead? Show me. I must see him! "The Chung Ui obeyed, offering his arm for assistance. He led Thich to the body. A tree root covered by grass and leaves caught his good foot. He fell belly first to lie nearly eye to eye with the object of his hate.

Over the pain in his voice came a note of pure pleasure. "You're dead! At last, I am rid of you." The face said nothing. The gray blue eyes were already fogging over. Reaching out a bloody finger, which touched one of the orbs. Nothing happened, no eye reflex at all. The back of Langer 's tunic was torn and bloody where two bullets had passed completely through him. Not yet completely satisfied he turned the body over to its back so he could see the wounds. Good! The sight of the three holes in the Legionnaire 's chest nearly compensated for the pain of his own wound. The man was dead, of that there was no doubt. Thich, like most men in war, had seen enough casualties to know that. Still, before rising, he put a hand to the carotid artery, pressed deep and felt for any trace of a pulse. At last he was content that his prey's life force had gone to whatever heaven or hell he had believed in. Thich ordered the Chung Ui to throw the body on the trail as a warning to the villagers in the region. He would have had the corpse dismembered, the balls cut off and put in the severed head's mouth, if his leg hadn't begun to throb so badly. A wave of pain rushed over him like hot water. His stomach churned and he threw up on Langer's body.

That was the end of the chase. Thich was not going to take a chance on bleeding to death or dying from infection. His greatest concern now was his own well-being. Escorted by the lieutenant and his squad, the climb back up the mountain was an agony of body and spirit for Thich. He had always prided himself on being unemotional and logical, but there had been a madness eating at him that some men only felt for a woman. He had wanted the scar-faced Legionnaire. He had wanted him so badly it hurt, nearly as much as his leg.

His two wounded men were left with two of the lieutenant's men to be brought up later after the dead were buried. In the meantime, he hoped the wild pigs of the jungle would enjoy the meal he had left for them on the trail.

His five remaining men took turns carrying him on a makeshift stretcher. They took the brunt of his abuse as they struggled back up the mountain trails with their angry cargo. He blamed them for being lax in their duty, for being stupid beasts that did not deserve to wear the uniform of the revolution. They were supposed to be soldiers. How could they fail him in such a manner and let one filthy Legionnaire treat them as if they were school children who had not studied their lessons? When they returned he would see to it that they were put into a special re-education class, a class for those who needed to have their revolutionary zeal rebuilt. They would receive a hundred hours of indoctrination on the principles of Danh du Trach Nhiem, Honor and responsibility. The senior Viet Minh soldier's efforts to explain were cut off with a terse order to be silent. ”Im Lang!" Comrade Huang Nguyen Thich was in no mood to hear excuses. Every step they took sent a jolt of fire through his throbbing leg. He knew he'd be lucky if he didn't lose it. Viet Minh doctors were unfortunately somewhat less proficient in medicine than their European counterparts.

Now that it was over, it was hard for Thich to recall just what had been the fascination the scar-faced man had held for him. At any rate it was done with and he could turn his energies to more useful endeavors. There was much to be done in the next few months. The tunnels had to be rebuilt and expanded. This time, he'd dig them so deep and strong that bombs would never give him any cause for concern again. Comrade General Giap had placed this project in his hands and he would not fail his old friend. When he was finished, the mountains around the valley of Dien Bien Phu would be able to house fifty thousand men and their equipment. When the time came he would be ready. Raising up on an elbow, he swore at his bearers to be careful and move faster. He wanted to be back at the tunnels before the rains came. He already felt a chill, and his leg burned.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Langer lay face down on the trail, his body crumpled and his mouth open on the damp earth. A centipede, searching for lesser organisms to eat, made a brief and unproductive journey into the open mouth. Crawling over the teeth, the yellow green arthropod sampled the bloody tongue with its antennae. It didn't like what it found there and wriggled its multitude of tiny feet back over the gums and lips to search for a more conventional meal. Two hours after the Viets had left, three villagers from a Montagnard hamlet of the Mnong tribe came upon the body. Even though the bloody tunic and trousers were great prizes, they left them alone and walked around the corpse on thick calloused soles, wrapping their thin homemade black and red striped cotton blankets a little tighter around their dark shoulders. The elder of the natives made a three fingered sign to ward off evil and whispered a prayer to the Thanh Tien of the mountains. Once past the body, he spat out a clot of red phlegm between black betel nut stained teeth. This was none of their business. All they needed to know or wanted lay within the confines of their small village. They didn't understand the reason why the Viets were fighting the French and they didn't care. All they knew was that no matter what happened, they would not be the ones to rule themselves.

The sky darkened. Winds began to increase in strength, shifting the branches of the trees, flapping the heavy green fronds of palms and banana trees like limp, waving arms.

Where the earth had dried, dust clouds rose to twist and dance a brief moment before the first fat drops of rain came to beat them down. Over the Red River delta, the winds rode with the moisture laden clouds. Coming in from the sea, the winds and rain swept over Nam Dinh, then turned inland up the Black River past Hoa Binh and Moc Chau to the valley where the rust colored waters of the Ma flowed south to the Gulf of Tonkin. It was near there that the skies again burst open on the mountains, the heavy rains running in brown frothing torrents, seeking the lower regions. Streams overflowed their beds and swamps became lakes for a time. On the trail where Langer lay, wind and rain whipped at his body. Red water from the clay in the soil covered the blood that his body and mouth had given up.

The rains passed, and with their passing came the dark. In the Mnong village the wisemen made magic and a precious young male water buffalo was sacrificed. They knew something was taking place in their mountains that was not good. Before, when troubles came, the high places and valleys had been their refuge. Now, the despised little men of the lowlands were there and the Mnong were no longer welcome in their own mountains. The body of the Dum Brun on the trail near their village was just another sign of the evil that was coming.

Large fires were built in the center of the village. The wisemen stood beside them and faced the four corners of sky and earth, tossing rice powder into the winds in the hope that the spirits of the elements would hear and honor their prayers. In two circles, the young men and women of the village danced. The men in loincloths on the outside circle moved in the opposite direction of their bare breasted women. Hands joined, they moved. With slow shuffling steps sideways, they began the ritual. One, two, stop! They raised their hands to the sky, lowered them to their sides and then repeated the action, always in the same direction, to the rhythm of brass tongs and skin covered drums. All that night they danced as signs were read and the future seen in the burned and scraped shoulder blade of the dead water buffalo. The wisemen covered their faces. There was nothing good to be read in the future. Only death and fire were to be seen in the charred scapula, death and pain for tens of thousands and they, the children of the mountains, were also to suffer. The old women of the village began to wail and grieve when they heard the future. They cried and tore at their faces with strong black nails, ripping their own flesh open. Instinct scared off a wandering leopard who had come to steal a dog from the village. It too, in its animal heart, knew that this was not a night to kill. The keening of the Mnong women sent it back to its lair to lie and watch the night with golden eyes, but it would not hunt. There were others in the hills far more dangerous than he.

Twice, pigs came to sniff at the body on the trail, but they didn't eat it. There was something about the flesh that made them snort, stick their tails straight in the air and trot away with stiff legs. This was not for them and they knew it.

With the dawn, the villagers collapsed in exhaustion from their devotions. They had done the best they could; now it was up to the gods. The fires had burned low and tendrils of smoke rose, floating on the gentle, morning breeze as they touched, then left, the still body of Langer.

In the dark that was his mind and soul, a pinpoint of light flickered once, then again. A delicate tremor ran along the mesentery of his abdominal cavity. The bleeding inside had stopped long before and, while in his death sleep, the cursed body was taking steps to heal itself. Blood filled lungs moved of their own volition. The tiny, hairlike cilia worked in waves, removing the blood drop by drop, shoving it up to the throat where the larynx spasmed, forcing the mouth open to throw out the black clots. The spark in his mind grew larger, thoughts beginning to flow together in a stream. Thousands of faces merged, swam, and dissolved. The curse that had been with him had not gone away. But it had been so long since he had felt its pull that he had nearly begun to doubt his own reality. The curse put on him had been given to him those long centuries ago at the mount of Golgotha, where the sad face of Jesus had looked down at him from the cross, then turned angry as the bloody spear in the hand of the Roman Legionnaire was pulled from his body. Jesus had looked down on the frightened face of the Roman soldier and told him in words that rivaled the storm and winds of that day:

"Soldier, you are content with what you are. Then that you shall remain, until we meet again!"

He, Casca Rufio Longinus, was condemned to live, to walk the earth until the second coming. Time and again over the centuries he had tried to die, and should have, but each time it had been denied him, as it was being denied him now. He was not an unusual man. He felt and loved and hurt as did everyone else. He knew cold and hunger, all the things that mortal men knew except for death. He was condemned to be no more than what he had been at that moment in Judea, a soldier. His destiny, to fight endless battles until the second coming of Jesus when he would at last be granted peace. The sweet peace of sleep from which he would never again have to wake.

His heart pounded once, twice, three times, then picked up its beat. Blood began to move through stiff veins and arteries. The lungs spasmed once more, sucking in air to feed the flood. The soldier of time blinked. Tears moistened his eyes and he saw light and cried for his lost death.

There was still pain from his wounds and if he had not been hit by the fast copper jacketed bullets from an M-1 carbine, there would have probably been a great deal more damage done to him. He had no choice but to go on. He was what he was, no more. Stiff and sore, he rose from the trail, checked the set of the morning sun and moved off on stiff awkward legs. It took several hours before all of his parts were functioning properly again, and he was hungry. Near a stream he found another trail and took it, keeping to a well-used track. He was pleased that it had begun to turn to the southwest, a direction that was sure to take him to regions controlled by the French, if he didn't stumble into a Viet ambush or patrol. Twice that day he saw Gruman f8f-1B fighter bombers go overhead, flying in the direction of Laos. Stopping only when the rains came in the afternoon, he found a poor semblance of a shelter between the roots of a tree and used a palm frond for an umbrella to keep the worst of the storm's pounding off his head and face. A four foot grass snake, washed out of its hole by the rains, slithered wetly by his foot and was kind enough to provide him with his supper. The flesh was tough and bland tasting, something like raw fish, but it did fill up the vacuum that had been gnawing at him all day.

For the next four days he played a game of hide and go seek with wandering patrols of Viet Minh. The villages he'd passed on the first two days were all Montagnard. On the third day he began to come across some that were inhabited by Vietnamese, a sure sign that he was getting close to civilization. The temptation to go into some of the villages he passed was not too difficult to avoid. He knew that if the village itself was not an active supporter of the Viet Minh, there would certainly be at least a few part time guerrillas living there. He did manage to steal a couple of chickens from one of them. These combined with what he was able to hunt on the trail lizards, bird's eggs, and even ants took up the worst of the slack in his food needs. Just after dawn on the fifth day since his ambush of the Viet Minh patrol, he broke out of the true brush onto a plain, dotted with patches of trees and crisscrossed with fields. Across them lay a good sized city, not one of the tiny hamlets of the highlands. He didn't know what the name of the town was, but anything this size would have to have a government garrison. Still, just to make sure, he moved to about three kilometers from the first of the buildings to where he could keep an eye on what traffic was moving in or out of the city. Not long after that he saw three armored cars move out on the road and head away from him to the southwest. On their sides was the insignia of the 1st REC. He was back on safe ground.

Suddenly the front of the lead car exploded, bursting one of the solid rubber tires and blowing the other completely off the rim. The engine on fire, it swerved off the road to careen into an irrigation ditch that fed the rice paddies. Langer dropped back down lower on his side of the road. As the crew of the car tried to escape their burning vehicle they were cut down by a burst of fire from a DPM light machine gun hidden in a grove of trees. The gunner operating the Degtyarev knew his business. Firing short, controlled bursts, he picked off the five men from the car with ease.

The other two cars screeched to a halt, the gunners on each sprayed the rice paddies to either side, searching for the hidden gunner who was now getting some support from a 60mm mortar. The drivers of the cars were wise enough not to pursue the situation any further. They were sitting ducks and, not knowing what they were up against, the best course would be to let wisdom rule over valor and get the hell back to town. Gears crashing, the drivers backed up. The light machine guns over the cabs were doing their best to burn their barrels up. Langer figured that he might as well get a ride into town as long as they were going that way. Rising from his side of the paddies, he ran for the armored cars. A burst from a .30 caliber weapon nearly took a leg off as he yelled at them, waving his arms above his head.

"Je suis un Legionnaire. Cessez de tirer." The cry of, "I am a Legionnaire. Stop firing!" was obeyed. They slowed down a bit as he ran toward them. Surprised faces reached out hands and hung on to him as the car ground up to peak speed, still traveling backward. For a moment, afraid his dangling legs were going to get caught in the half-track's treads, he wished he had stayed on the ground and taken his chances with the Viets. The drivers of the two cars drove in reverse as fire from the DPM light machine gun peppered the steel sides and front. On all sides, mortar shells bracketed them until they were out of range. Then, and only then did they turn cars around for the rest of the short return trip. When they slowed up, Langer was hauled over the side into the rear of the car, scraping his nose on the steel floor and nearly losing an eye on the corner of a box of machine gun ammunition Turning over on his back he looked up at the lean faces of the Legionnaires manning the machine gun: "Je suis heureux de vous voir."

A gruff voice responded with a German accent, "It's nice that you are glad to see us kamarade. But what the scheiss were you doing out there, and who do you belong to?"

Holding on to the ammo case as the heavy car made a sharp turn, he called out over the roar of the motor, "The 2nd BEP. Just escaped."

Langer put off the rest of the questions until he caught his breath. The two armored cars rumbled back into town, passing a pair of sandbagged bunkers on either side of the road. He hadn't been able to see them because of a rise in front of the town. If he had, he would have just gone straight on in, saving himself this last bit of aggravation. Sometimes he wondered if he was really cut out for this kind of work.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Gus waddled through the myriad of tin roofed houses and shacks, down streets, into alleyways, ignoring the smell of fish and charcoal cooking fires that blended with the odors of excrement rising from the drainage ditches along the streets and oozing from the alleys where the less fortunate lived. All in all, it had not been a bad day. His pockets were full of good francs and his mouth was ready for a thick chateaubriand, even if it was cut from the hide of a water buffalo. Best of all, his plan to drive Hermann mad was progressing nicely. Now that he had an ally in his plottings, it was much easier to make himself scarce when the actual events took place, removing him from any blame for the former Sergent chef's increasingly nervous condition. Ciardello had a mind as devious as his face was pretty. Between the two of them they had Hermann at their mercy, especially since Dominic had made a point of bad mouthing Gus. He even picked a fight with the human ape just to convince Hermann that he was to be trusted. Of course, Gus didn't really hurt him. Having once lived with a professional lady wrestler in Dresden, he had learned many of her tricks, it looked good, but there was actually no more harm done than a bloody nose on each and a lot of grunts.

They were always at least one step ahead of Hermann. Every move that Hermann made for revenge was quickly countered, and as with all acts of terrorism, ruthlessly retaliated against. Gus stalked his every movement with the determination of a religious fanatic trying to bring a stray soul back into the fold. Through the good efforts of his handsome Italian compatriot, he had just collected his rewards on another coup. Gus had wangled an invitation to sit in on a card game where Hermann would be present. Hermann liked to gamble and was an inveterate cheat. He simply could not refuse the temptation to mark cards or slip in a set of loaded dice, even when playing with his own comrades. But he wasn't a good enough mechanic to deal seconds or even bottoms. The best he could do was use trick cards and dice, which he ordered from an American novelty supply house in Kansas City, Missouri. To this effect, there had been a big game taking place at a Chinese sing song house, known as the Café of the Summer Moon, where members of the French forces went to relax in relative security. The owners paid protection money to the Viet Minh, guaranteeing that their customers, though they were the enemy, would not be bothered coming or going from the house. This worked to everyone's advantage and Gus thought the arrangement admirable and quite logical. The Viet Minh needed money, the Chinese needed customers and the French needed somewhere to go where they wouldn't be caught while they had a hard on.

It was just before Hermann left the barracks to make his regular Saturday stop for a blackjack game at the sing song house that the marked cards, which he kept in his locker, were switched by Dominic Ciardello. They were replaced with ones belonging to Gus. This time, when Hermann cold decked the game, he would be in for quite a surprise; and there would be nothing he could do about it. Gus would be the only one who could read the "paper" Hermann brought in with him. And Gus knew that darling Hermann would wait until the pot was right and he was holding a good hand. Then he would switch decks for the draw, knowing he would be able to read what everyone else had. At least he thought he would be able to.

Gus stepped over the carcass of a dead cat, chuckling with fiendish pleasure, recalling the events of the last few minutes. He'd experienced boyish delight when Hermann at last switched decks for the big pot. The betting had been heavy. Participating in the game were two hardened sergents from the 2nd BEP, one from the 13th DBE, and a caporal from one of the Moroccan companies. The expression on Hermann's face had been beautiful to behold. As he reached out to rake in the pot, it changed from smug to confused when Gus had stopped him by laying his own cards down, beating Hermann's hand. In shock, Hermann had blurted out: "You son of a bitch, those aren't the cards I dealt you!" Thus letting everyone at the table know he was a cheat. While the others were venting their righteous rage on Hermann, Gus, as was his norm, took the better course to valor and left before they figured out that he too would have had to have been cheating. In order not to have the others gunning for him, he'd tossed a goodly sum of francs on the floor for them to divide among themselves. It was not as much as they had lost, but he could always claim ignorance. That had never been very hard for him to do. He estimated, knowing the temperament of those he had left behind, that Hermann would not be in the hospital any more than five or six weeks. When last seen, he was giving a good account of himself. His back against the wall, fighting off his attackers with the leg of a teak table, Hermann cried out for Gus's help. Gus refused his invitation. He had more pressing matters to attend to, such as dividing up the money with Dominic, then figuring out how to get the Italian to spend his half on the forthcoming party he had in mind.

Hermann's bulldog face was red with sweat, blood, and hate as he took the table leg and pounded on the thick skull of a Polish parachutist from the 1st BEP. At the same time the Moroccan attempted to disembowel him with a bayonet. Kicking the Arab between the legs with one booted foot, he used the body of the Pole as a shield to break through the angry faces around him. A broken bottle took off the lower lobe of his right ear. Blood ran down the side of his face. Blocking the heavy fist of a sargent from the 13th, he threw the Pole's unconscious body at them and broke loose, scrambling over tables and chairs in his haste to make an exit. Stumbling out the front door, a bottle of vodka followed his progress, bouncing with an audible thonk off the thick bone of his skull. The others in the game were now fighting among themselves for the money Gus had thrown on the floor. They could always get the conniving Hermann later but none of them wanted to leave the money behind, knowing it would be gone when they returned.

Hermann swore vengeance as he took to the alleys. Ignoring the startled looks of peasants and workers, he plowed through them like the ramming prow of a Roman galley, his uniform torn and bloody, his ear ripped half off and a definite swelling growing on the back of his head.

Hermann was in a royal piss. He didn't know how this had happened, but he knew who had made it happen, and was determined to have his pound of flesh. No! Considering the size of Gustaf, he'd have his ton of flesh one way or the other.

Straightening out his uniform and adjusting the tilt of his kepi so it was at the proper rakish angle to fit his mood, Gus made for the entrance to the Chat Blanc Bistro, where he was to rendezvous with Dominic. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the bistro's interior. He was greeted with some trepidation by a petite Vietnamese hostess doing her best to look like a girl from the streets of Paris. She would have done much better had she stayed with the softer, flowing silk and cotton ao dai of her native land. Gus handed her his kepi, fighting off the temptation to pat the firm, tight buttocks of the tiny girl. He was in a hurry to let Dominic know the results of their latest ploy. The other clients kept a watchful eye on the big German as he went by, several of them cringing at the remembrance of past encounters. Two left the bar altogether. Dominic saw Gus coming toward him, passing the bar and ignoring the invitations of the day shift bar girls sitting on a row of stools. With some reluctance, Dominic shooed off the three girls sitting with him and on him. He was one of the very few men Gus knew who had the working girls buying drinks for him. If Dominic had been a whore, in six months he could have retired for life, living in total luxury in Cannes.

The girls were upset, wondering what the semi human looking beast could be telling Dominic that was more interesting than them. From the farthest end of the bar, ears perked up. The girls had developed the ability to hear the crinkling of money at an incredible distance. In a flash, several of them changed their minds about Gus. The money he was laying out in piles on the table could have made a Malayan saltwater crocodile appealing. Wine and cognac of good vintage was ordered for all. One thing they knew from experience about Gus, when he had money he spent it. Dominic was laughing so hard he didn't notice Gus paid for the wine from his pile.

Hermann knew he couldn't report back to camp in his present condition. He took the time to stop and have a Vietnamese doctor treat the worst of his injuries. While his cuts and bruises were being tended to, he had the doctor's nurse take his uniform out for a quick laundering to get the blood out of it. As he waited, he fairly seethed with hatred for the subhuman who had caused him so much grief. The only pleasure he'd had in months was when the monster's friend, that other troublemaker Langer, had been captured. He hoped Langer's death had not been too quick. Swine like him should suffer as long as possible.

Gus was in rare form, swilling wine and roaring out ballads from the eastern front. Dominic had passed out and two bar girls were attempting to drag him off, each with a booted foot in their hands, arguing over who was to have him. As Gus broke into the lyrics of one of the old songs, “lch hat ta einen kameraden," a plaintive ballad about a dead friend, he suddenly broke into tears. His mood changed from elation to sorrow in one heartbeat. He thought of Carl, sweet, understanding Carl Langer, and he blamed himself for his friend's capture. Groans of grief burst from his hairy barrel chest, startling the girls into dropping Ciardello's feet. Filled with remorse, Gus opened his throat and drained a full liter of Pinot Noir. The sight of the beat up, hulking Legionnaire in such a state touched the hearts of the girls so greatly that when he at last passed out they let him keep half his money.

When he woke up the next morning, there were three others in bed with him; Dominic and two of the bar girls. It took some time for him to determine which were his own legs, since he had no feeling in his lower limbs. Groaning, he knew that the years were catching up to him. In the past, a small party like the previous night would have left him with no more than a minor thirst. Rolling out of the bed, he knocked one of the girls on the floor. Gently, he picked up the small, delicate body and laid it on Dominic's chest then stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. It was time to head back. There was a war waiting and life had to go on.

His morning ablutions were interrupted by Dominic's pounding on the bathroom door. “Can't you wait till a man empties his bladder, you lousy wop?" Dominic was used to Gus's bad temper in the morning. Besides he was too sick to take issue with him.

"Langer is on his way back. He's free!" Dominic blurted.

Gus burst out of the bathroom, trousers half on. He pointed a hairy finger at Dominic's wine ravaged face. "Don't shit me. I'm in no mood for it! "

Dominic held his head between his fingers trying to block out the worst of the bellowing.

"It's the truth. Stefan, from the Headquarters communications center just woke me up. Langer escaped and made it to Na Sam where he was picked up yesterday. He'll be coming in with a convoy in a couple of hours. "

Gus broke down and cried like a baby, tears welling up around his beady eyes and running down his stubble-covered face. It took Dominic and the two girls to get him cleaned up and dressed. Being Italian, Dominic understood the feelings Gus had for Langer. They were like family, and no one could sever that bond. Once they had Gus outside, he waved down a cyclo cab for the ride back to camp. Gus gained control over his emotions before they got off the three wheeled bicycle taxi and passed the main gate under the distrustful and suspicious eyes of two military gendarmes, who'd been given plenty of reasons for not being very fond of the Legion parachutists.

Hermann blasphemed every god of every land for this unreasonable curse which had been laid upon his shoulders. Now that Langer was coming back he knew he'd never have any peace. Gus was bad enough, but Langer was smart and much tougher to deal with. He had planned on killing Gus the next time they went on patrol, but now if he did he knew that Langer would get him. There was no justice in the world. He took out some of his rage by literally kicking out of his quarters the ten year old Tonkinese houseboy who served him. The child said nothing, nor did he cry. He had seen too much in his years to let a mere kick bother him. To get even, he made it a point to pour sugar into the gas tanks of at least three trucks that day.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When news of Langer's escape was radioed in to headquarters in Hanoi, it was immediately brought to the attention of General Navarre. Things had been happening around those mountains that he didn't like very much. All of their attempts at patrolling the area had been met with fanatical resistance. Perhaps now he could find out why those mountains were so important to Giap. He ordered Langer to be put on the next convoy out of Na Sam.

Henri Navarre was definitely not pleased with his progress since assuming command from General Salan in May. He knew he was a good strategist but this country defied most attempts at logic. Even with that, he did not think he had done too badly. His "Operation Hirondelle," if not a complete success militarily, had not been a defeat. It did accomplish several objectives, one of them being the paratroop assault on Langson where large stockpiles of Viet Minh arms were destroyed. Other than that there was not much he could claim he had done very well. His forces were still killing more than they were losing, but he knew that wars were not won by the number of dead inflicted unless they were killed faster than their birth rate. And it was getting worse every day, especially since the signing of the Korean Armistice on July 17. Chinese aid to the Viet Minh had become massive in its scope. Supplies that would have gone to resupply the Chinese divisions in Korea were now being rerouted to the Viet Minh. It was imperative that he regain the initiative before the Viet Minh were able to gain material superiority over his thinly spread forces and, from what his intelligence men said about the increasing flow of material, that could be quite soon. Once that happened there would be nothing he could do to prevent a major disaster from occurring. He could not allow that to happen. He was a general of France and would not tolerate his reputation being dragged through the dirt. If he had to, he would sacrifice every life in his command to make certain such a thing would never take place.

General Navarre stared with red rimmed watery eyes at the map of Indochina hanging on his wall as if the lines and colors on it held a solution to his troubles. There was too much ground and too few men to secure it all. If only the government had not passed such a stupid law! He couldn't imagine a more ridiculous situation than having to fight an unpopular war ten thousand miles from home and only being able to use regular army volunteers to do it with. Draftees could not be sent over. Ridiculous! He had to rely entirely too much on foreign volunteers and, of late, the quality of the manpower he was receiving as replacements was not as good as it had been. The training depots at Sidi Slimane and Sidi bel Abbes had turned into no more than soldier factories, churning out meat for the grinder.

He needed desperately to maneuver Giap into an open confrontational battle, where the enemy's main force would at last be committed en masse. Once this was accomplished, the war could be conducted on civilized terms without the incessant sniping and ambushing. It simply was not gentlemanly to fight that way. Sighing with frustration at his many problems, he went back to the mounds of paperwork on his desk.

It was amazing how much a night's sleep and a stomach full of food could do to restore a man. Langer neither felt, nor looked, like the ragged thing that had hitched a ride on the half-track just the day before. When he exchanged his ragged bloody uniform for a new one, he explained the bullet holes in his tunic with a simple, "I took the jacket off a dead Viet." More difficult was being able to avoid seeing the battalion doctor. This was finally accomplished by not showing up until it was too late. The convoy was ready to pull out and, as he showed no visible ills from his experience, the doctor let him off with a minor ass chewing and told him to check into the hospital when he reached Hanoi. The ride back to the camp outside Hanoi was conducted with more caution than usual. The Viets had been getting more courageous every day. Ambushes were to be expected at any time, no matter how large or well-armed the convoy.

One truck was damaged two kilometers from Na Sam. A land mine blew off a tire. There were no injuries other than the two and a half ton truck, and it would be hauled in to be worked on later that day, providing it hadn't been completely stripped by the natives.

Langer rode in the shotgun seat of a jeep. They passed the wrecked vehicle wondering what was going to happen next. There was tension in the air and something was going to break soon. Everyone knew it. They just didn't know where and when. But they'd find out. This trip was not too different from others he had taken. Only the names and faces were different. As they passed peasants on the roads, carrying their crops to market or working the fields, he wondered if hate lay behind their bland expressions or if they carried in their carts a dozen submachine guns to be used against them that night. They were particularly suspicious of anyone between the ages of fourteen and sixty, the gun bearing, years. Even here, the French were making the same mistakes the Germans had in Russia. He wondered why military histories were written if no one ever learned anything from them. In Russia, for instance, they would send a couple of snipers into a village to kill a few of the advancing Germans. The snipers would then disappear, abandoning the village to the tender mercies of the Germans who would arrest everyone of gun bearing age and take reprisals by killing some, if not all, of the villagers. Naturally, this did not sit well with the locals, who usually decided that if they were going to be killed or arrested for doing nothing, then perhaps they should do something, even if they did not like the Reds. It was better to be mistreated by their own people than by foreigners.

Langer's reflections were jerked back to the present as the driver swerved to avoid a pothole in the road where a land mine had interrupted the progress of another vehicle. Only three kilometers from Hanoi! They were nearly home free! The winds were just beginning when they rolled past the gendarmes at the main entrance to the headquarters compound. The driver of the jeep Langer rode in stopped at the gate to ask directions.

“Ou est le quartier general?' After getting his answer, he flipped the gendarmes a half assed salute and turned off on a side road, leaving the convoy to deliver his passenger to General Navarre. Gus and Dominic would just have to wait a while longer before they'd be able to see him.

After identifying himself, Langer was hustled past a thin faced major from Intelligence, who made a small grimace of distaste at his unkempt appearance. Opening the door to Navarre's office, the major entered first then stepped aside to let Langer report.

Stepping forward the regulation distance, his cap under his arm, he saluted the thin faced commander of France's forces in Asia.

"Mon General, Caporal Langer de 2me Bataillon Etrangere des Parachutistes."

Navarre returned the salute with a casual half wave of his hand, saying he was glad to see him. "Je suis heureux de vous voir." Then he got right to the heart of the matter.

"Tell me where you have been and what you have seen and heard while in the mountains of Dien Bien Phu."

Navarre did not have time to concern himself with the man's treatment at the hands of the enemy. He had more important things to consider. With the major's prompting, Langer went over every facet of his capture and detention a dozen times. Most important was the exact location of the tunnels. Navarre was a bit irritable at the vagueness of Langer’s answer. Frequently referring to his map, he and Langer tried to guess where Langer could have been held by estimating the time it had taken him to reach known points marked on the map. The size of the tunnel network and number of cases of artillery shells were particularly discomforting. Navarre did not believe the Viets had too much in the way of de gros canons. Maybe the crates were just empties, being used for storage. After all, the Legionnaire didn't report that he had seen any of the big guns during his escape, nor had he heard or seen anything that would lead one to think there might be large numbers of artillery in the mountains. What did disturb him was the rate of construction going on. The size of the installation made him look at its location. There was little strategic significance to Dien Bien Phu itself other than that it sat in the middle of a prosperous opium growing region ten miles from the Laotian border. Dien Bien Phu village sat in a heart shaped rice paddy filled basin ringed by low, heavily wooded, steep sided mountains. It was from there Langer had escaped. The Viet Minh in those mountains were no immediate threat to the French, who held the cities and coasts of North Vietnam. If the Viet Minh were planning a larger scale attack, they would have built their system closer to the French lines of communication and supply, nearer to the Chinese frontier, not on the border of Laos. And they already had major structures in the Viet Bac region of Tuyen Quang, Bak An, Ha Giang and Thai Nguyen from which they would logically have staged such an operation. Why then did they choose Laos?

Langer was dismissed with the general's thanks. The major said nothing. He too was looking at the vulnerable frontier where the southern route led into the Plain des Jars. Laos had always been a weak spot, difficult for them to supply with hundreds of miles of jungles and mountains bordering China and Vietnam. He, like the general , had come to a conclusion. The Viet Minh were going to make a major push into Laos. The scar faced Legionnaire's report merely confirmed much of what he had already learned from his agents in the field. Giap had moved four of his elite divisions into the Dien Bien Phu area, including his most prized 351st Division, which as far as he knew, was the only division the Viet Minh had that was equipped with a number of 105mm guns donated to them by the Chinese. How many 105s they had he didn't know, but there couldn't have been too many or Giap would have used them before now. Even without heavy artillery support, four main force divisions were strong enough to present a very real threat to Laos. If they took that country they would be able to strike at the heart of the French and have new resources of manpower and supplies to draw on, which could mean victory for them. It had to be Laos.

As Langer left the general's office he heard him say with quiet desperation in his voice, "Nous n'avons pas de temps a perdre."

Langer believed the general was right. There was no time to lose!

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Gus was waiting for Langer when he left Navarre's office. Dominic had acquired a Citroen taxi just to please Gus, who was adamant that Langer be picked up in style. It would be at least a couple of hours before the driver missed it. He had treated the Vietnamese owner to a stay at a Tonkinese opium den.

There was something about Langer that bothered Gus. He had seen it before in Russia. A kind of distant sadness that couldn't be put properly into words. Dominic said nothing; he was only there to make sure that Gus didn't get into any trouble this close to headquarters.

Fighting his normal tendencies, Gus held his tongue. Instinct said this was not the time for questions. When Langer was ready he would speak. Until then there was no use in attempting to pry anything out of him. It was a silent journey back to their camp. Langer was deeply troubled by Navarre's last words. He had fought too many battles in too many wars not to be able to read the hidden signs that said a man was out of his element. Navarre did not belong. He had no understanding of the manner in which to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign. His mind was still locked up in the outmoded tactics of the Maginot Line, which had led to the French debacle in World War Two.

The ride to the 2nd BEP's bivouac area near the airfield went unnoticed by Langer. He neither saw nor heard anything that went on as they wormed their way through streets packed with the mixed humanity of Southeast Asia.

Even Gus's vendetta against Hermann was forgotten by the riders, but not by the owner of the puffy red eyes who stared bayonets in their backs as they rolled past.

Hermann had managed to get the others in the game off his back by making a payoff through an intermediary. At least now he wouldn't be murdered in his sleep or wake up with a grenade taped to his balls. Hermann felt more than justified in his hatred for Gus. He had never liked Langer either. There was something about the man he couldn't reach. There was no way to scare him. Hermann didn't like men he couldn't frighten. Gus was a different matter. Like Langer the oversized German was not afraid of anything but it was in a different manner than his scar faced friend. Gus was no more than a basic animal. Langer had something about him that showed in the eyes every now and then, and it scared Hermann. There was death in the eyes of the former Panzer soldier and it wasn't his own. It was as if those eyes had seen more war and slaughter than a man could experience in a dozen lifetimes.

Hermann left the corner where he had seen the three drive by. He had more important things to do. He could not tolerate being abused or insulted any further. Someone was going to have to pay, and pay now. He fingered the Solingen made switchblade in his pocket as he made one more turn down rue d'Eau, the street where he had lived with the slut who had given him the clap. No one would miss her. She was just a whore and her death would be blamed on the Viet Minh. It was not uncommon for those who slept with or collaborated with the French to have their throats slit and their bodies mutilated. It was standard operating procedure for terrorists.

He waited until the rains came then entered his former residence. The girl was in bed asleep. It had been a hard night. Hermann stood silently next to the bed looking down at her, remembering the times he had been on top of her. She had been very, very good. He almost regretted what he was about to do. He cocked his ear to make certain the sound of the storm was loud enough. He didn't want to kill her while she was asleep. He wanted her to know it was him. The click of the blade opening brought a small stir to the sleeping girl. The sounds of the storm were normal, familiar. The tiny metallic sound of the stainless steel blade was alien.

Hermann leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. Her eyes snapped open instantly focusing on the familiar face. She knew the touch of her former lover and slapped him across the face with her right hand; cracking open his lower lip. Hermann smiled. Grabbing her by her thick, waist length black hair, he pulled her head back, twisting her neck so she couldn't move without it breaking. She saw the knife. At first, she made small begging noises for him not to hurt her. But as the cutting began, they turned to guttural groans then shrieks of terror and pain as the razor edge of the knife slid over the firm muscled skin of her abdomen and breasts. It took nearly an hour for her to die. When Hermann left, he was thankful it was still storming. The rain would help to wash most of the blood off his uniform and hands.

By the time he had reached the compound the blood was gone from his clothes and body. He only looked drenched and tired, but with a tiredness that had a satisfied expression to it. The sentry at the gate just thought that the caporal had found a good lay and had been out enjoying himself.

Langer had to repeat his story to his new executive officer, Lieutenant Jean Paul Villon. Just in from Sidi Slimane after graduating from the Acadamy of St. Cyr, Villon was one of those neat sincere young men who believed in causes. He had intelligent brown eyes, soft dark hair and a firmness to the mouth that spoke of inner strength. He'd been in the country for six weeks and, from what Gus said, had the makings of a good officer if he lived long enough. With the rate of their losses in the last couple of years, it was even money on that kind of bet. If a man could survive his first ninety days then he had a chance to get out alive, but only if he learned his lessons.

Villon listened carefully to the answers given him, making notes to give to his commanding officer at the evening briefing. Langer made no mention of his being ordered to report to the doctor for an examination, stating only that he had seen the doctor at Na Sam and was all right. Villon gave him permission to leave, ordering him, "Take three days off, but be present for reveille every morning in case we need to ask you anything further." His pass had already been prepared for him by the company clerk and was handed over as he left the office. Gus and Dominic were still waiting in the taxi.

"Did you get your pass?" Gus asked, grinning. Langer showed it to him without answering. He sometimes wondered what Gus would have done if he'd been a general.

They made a quick trip to their barracks, where Gus had his kit laid out, new boots shined to high polish and a fresh set of drill khakis on his bunk. Tonight, they would hold a reunion, an anniversary party. Langer didn't think he was ready for any kind of a party but the cheerful smiling face of Gus, his single gold tooth gleaming, was too much for him to resist. If he didn't go, Gus would pout for days.

"What the hell do you mean by an anniversary?" he asked suspiciously.....

Gus leaped to his feet, giving the old straight armed Nazi salute as he barked out in the Prussian military mariner: "Sir, I, Gustaf Beidemann, once a fighter against the forces of bolshevism in the great crusade of our once holy German Fuhrer Adolf What's his name, beg to report that on this date of September 17th in the year 1943, you, one time Stabsfeldwebel Carl Langer, did receive at the hands of his gracious lordship, Field Marshal Eric von Manstein, also known as the Fire Man, the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross for gallantry in the face and the rear of the enemies of civilization."

They steered Langer back to the taxi. Each of them now properly outfitted with clean uniforms, white round topped kepis, and blue sashes wrapped around their waists. They were ready for action. Dominic drove, for which Langer was thankful, recalling the time Gus had driven through the side of a dacha in Russia during the battle of Kursk. He had stopped their tank, while a battle was raging, to prevent a bottle of vodka from being knocked off a table in the house. Gus always had his priorities straight. These memories brought a swelling of almost forgotten emotions to Langer.

They were still with him when the party began. The day turned to night, with wine and vodka flowing in rivers. They drank and sang the old songs of a bygone age and the friends they had known. In the midst of alcohol fumes, Langer had to shake his head to be certain that Teacher wasn't there in front of him. Teacher, the gentle, tough, caring man who wanted nothing from anyone other than to be kind. He had been the one who'd finally brought Langer to the breaking point with the Nazis when he'd made his final statement at the railyards near Sulwalki in east Prussia. Einsatz Truppen of the SS Totenkopf, the death head boys and their Ukrainian counterparts, were loading Jews into cattle cars, working feverishly for the "Final Solution." Teacher could take war, but this slaughter of innocents was too much for him. He had walked over to a group of the laughing SS men with no more emotion than when he had been teaching school and had cut them down with long hosing bursts from his Schmeisser submachine gun. Langer had started to go with him but Teacher made him stay behind, saying this was something he had to do alone. After killing the SS men, Teacher had knelt down, hands in front of him holding a grenade. He then pulled the pin. Eyes full of tears he looked to the skies and said, "God, forgive me that I didn't do this sooner."

Two SS Sturmmen seeing him on his knees, his weapon on the ground, rushed for him just in time to join him in death as the grenade exploded.

Langer shook his head to get rid of the picture. Gales of laughter from Gus, and more vodka, helped dull the images as did the warm lips of a delicate Tonkinese girl who felt a strange attraction for the sad scar faced man who seemed to carry such a burden. Gus ordered drinks for all, bellowing out his request over the raspy blare of a record player.

Dominic was sitting in the corner of the booth presiding over an argument among three bar girls over who was to have him this night. The hand of a private from the 13th DBE reached over to touch the shoulder of one of Dominic's girls with the intent to take her back to his table. The hand stopped and was quickly withdrawn when a stiletto touched his throat. Dominic, who had once been a knife thrower in a circus sideshow, spoke gently to him. "Mon ami, for a man who faces death at the hands of the Viet Minh why do you come seeking it sooner at my table? Go away and let someone else kill you."

Before the private returned to his table, he gave the three paratroopers evil looks, then joined his comrades. The girls at Dominic's table had reached their final stages of competition and were bidding for him, with Gus playing the auctioneer.

The man Dominic had threatened had his head together with five of his comrades, all of them watching the table where the three Legionnaires had cornered the best looking women in the bar. More drinks and the private's fear turned to hate as the cognac rebuilt his damaged ego. He, after all, did have two more men on his side and were they not of the Legion Etrangere also? His friends were rapidly taking on the same indignant attitude as their comrade. If he was insulted then they were insulted also. This could not be. They had the pride of the 13th Demi Brigade to uphold. Gus caught the movement from the table out of the corner of his eye and said to Dominic in low tones so no one else could hear, "Keep your knife in its sheath. Let's not kill them. Just break them up a bit, my pretty Dago Lothario."

If anyone other than Gus or Langer had used such words to him they would have had their guts laid out on the floor. But Gus insulted everyone, and if he didn't say something offensive to you it was only because he was mad at you.

The five men of the 13th advanced on the booth. Before they got far Gus stopped them with a question. "What is it that brings you to us with such serious faces, comrades? Is there something we can do for you?"

The men looked at each other, then the one whose throat had been pricked by Dominic's toothpick stuck his face next to Gus's. "Yes, you great mount of suet. We want your women and an apology from your faggot friend. "

Gus burped a cloud of grain alcohol.

"I certainly do not think that is unreasonable as we are after all camarades in arms, so forth and so forth. But any executive decisions will have to come from our leader. "

He indicated Langer who had his face stuck in the warm nape of his girl, oblivious to what was going on around him. Gus thought perhaps a little action was what was needed to restore Langer to his former self. One thing he knew, that even blind drunk, Langer was probably the only man he'd ever met who could outfight him with any and all weapons except perhaps in a case of brute strength, and then he wasn't too sure. He had seen his ex-sergent do some pretty weird things over the years.

The private poked at Langer's shoulder with a spatulate digit. "Hey, cochon, look at me when I speak to you. We want your women. I think I'll take the one you have for starters. That's all right with you, n'est ce pas?"

The knife Dominic had held against him had scared him, but when Langer released the girl to look at him, the private saw death in the gray blue eyes that were older than creation. Langer rose slowly up to his full five foot ten. His shirt was open where the girl had been playing with the hairs on his chest. The private saw scars there that made his own body ache just looking at them. Through the mist of wine and drink, Langer reached out a hand. Freezing the private in place with his eyes, he put his fingers on the man's neck, his thumb on the carotid artery sheath and the other on the thick band of muscles making up the sterno-mastoid. He pressed in and twisted. Increasing the strength in his hand, he pivoted the private around on his heel until his balance broke and he fell. It was a good thing he was already unconscious, or the tear in his scalp he'd received when he bounced off the sharp corner of a table would have hurt. Langer turned to the others as Gus and Dominic moved over to stand beside him. All the rage and frustration of many years burst out of him in a cry that hadn't been heard in centuries. Odin! He waded into the men of the 13th. The entire bar joined in the fray with an abandon that was a glory to see. Girls screamed then picked sides as their lovers or best paying customers were trampled underfoot or attacked. Dominic went down under the weight of two caporals of the 13th. They should have gone after Gus or Langer; they would have fared better. Dominic's women went to his rescue, attacking the caporals with hairpins and knives. Once he was clear, they decided to become allies and share him, in order to prevent the possibility of anything on the handsome Italian from being damaged. They dragged him away from the fight, back across an alley to where their rooms were.

Gus shook men off him like dandruff, fighting and drinking at the same time as a small Legionnaire from the 3rd REI stood at arm's length pounding at the giant's massive gut. When Gus finished the bottle of Pernod he was sucking, he tapped the little man lightly with an open hand and broke his jaw. Langer was cornered by six men from different units when Gus reached him. Between them they cleaned the place out leaving broken bottles and soldiers all around them. Gus was cut from a few small scratches and Langer was roaring like a berserker, eyes red and glazed. He wouldn't stop swinging even when the brawl was over, and Gus knew the gendarmes would be coming soon. As a favor to his best friend, he sucker punched Langer into oblivion, threw him over his shoulder, grabbed two girls and disappeared out the back, content that he had once again been the saving of his friend.

When they reported back in the morning, it was an ill and weak crew that stood at reveille, weak, but together and ready for whatever the gods of war were going to bring to them next.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Comrade Colonel Thich reread the communication from Giap. Accidentally, his hand knocked over an ashtray. As he bent over to retrieve it his leg gave a spasm of pain. Once more, he cursed the day he had met the Legionnaire. The doctors had said he would have a limp for the rest of his life. Philosophically, he tried to look on the wound as one more piece of evidence of the loyalty and sacrifices he had made to the cause of the revolution.

Returning his attention to the letter, he absently scratched his head and leaned back in his chair. The dark walls of the tunnels were now as natural to him as his father's home had been before he had taken to the jungles with Giap. Everything was going according to plan. From all reports, Navarre would make his move soon and, if he was as predictable in the future as he had been in the past, they would at last have their victory, one which would break the will of the French people to any further support of the running dog, Navarre and his hirelings. From a hundred sources he had been piecing together the forthcoming picture, which proved once again the wisdom of Giap's methodical and careful planning. Medical supplies were being stockpiled, coffins ordered, ammunition being loaded onto pallets for air transport. All these clues gave him answers he was quite pleased with. After the revolutionary forces had taken the French outpost at Na Sam, there was no other way for them to come. It would be by air, and that was what he wanted. There could be no doubt, General Navarre would move and do it within the week. Men could not be kept in such a state of readiness indefinitely. They were coming and all was in readiness to give them a reception they would not soon forget.

Dawn was just creeping over the horizon, bringing with it the welcome crisp breath of a new day to blow away some of the heaviness of the night. The airfield at Hanoi hummed with activity and the sounds of engines warming up. Langer, Gus, and Dominic adjusted each other's straps on their parachutes to get the best fit. It was uncomfortable to have one's gonads trapped between the canvas harness during the opening shock of the chute. Something like that could ruin the whole day. They were all outfitted in new American marine camouflage jackets over French olive green trousers. Even their helmets were American made. Their weapons were the same mixture as their clothing. Langer looked to the skies. The day was going to be clear with complete visibility. He wondered what kind of reception they were going to have when they hit the silk. If the Viet Minh were waiting for them while they were still in the air, it would be like shooting hanging fruit from a tree. At least the rains were over. November in the highlands was a time when the nights were cool and the days pleasant, but Langer knew that their stay in the valley would not be.

Hermann had made back his stripes, but only because they were so short of qualified men the commanding officer had no choice but to do so. Once the insignia of his rank was re-sewn on his sleeves, Hermann returned to his old self. Gus's plan to drive him mad had to be temporarily abandoned once they'd begun training for the forthcoming operation. It was there that Hermann hoped for an opportunity to opt rid of all his problems. There were so many ways it could be done. A grenade in their sleeping quarters at night. A burst of machine gun fire in the back during a Viet attack. It was with delicious pleasure that he went over each method of disposing of the three men.

Hermann got the nod from the jumpmaster and barked out the orders for his platoon to board the Douglass C 47. They filed into the plane each taking a long look at the tail of the aircraft and wondering why no one ever hit it when they went out the door. Hermann 's platoon was to be the only one of the 2nd BEP to go in on the initial drop. The rest would follow later. They were to be attached to the 1st BEP for the time being. Because of their past success in patrolling and sniping, they were to be used as a mobile fire group to keep the Viets busy in the hills until the valley sites could be secured.

At twelve thousand feet the flight of C-47s made their approach, covering the two hundred seventy kilometers from Hanoi to Dien Bien Phu in an hour when Langer's last trip had taken days. From the sky the country looked deceptively peaceful. Fields were crisscrossed with rice paddies and water buffaloes pulled plows through thigh deep mud. Men fished from the sides of rivers and streams, drawing in nets for their day's catch, some of which would be dried and shipped to the cities on the coast. Then came the range of thickly covered mountains as they passed over what had been the strong point of Na Sam. There were still people there but no French. The Na Sam garrison had been successfully evacuated by air. General Giap made no attempt to interfere with the airlift, leaving Navarre to draw the conclusion that he would be able to keep a major force supplied and reinforced by air, if he so chose. And now, he had chosen to do this very thing.

The flight of planes passed over an isolated Montagnard village. The natives looked to the skies and made signs to ward off evil. For some days they'd been prepared. Already their belongings had been gathered into bundles and packs. By some primal instinct they knew this was not a place to stay. They would head for the remote regions to the west until the coming evil had passed. They left their pathetic fields and huts behind to receive whatever was coming. Driving their animals before them they looked the same as any primitive tribe from ten thousand years earlier, an Aboriginal people on the move searching for safety.

Colonel Thich adjusted his khaki drill uniform, found the cane he had made to assist his stiff leg and went to the entrance of the main tunnel complex. Giap was coming. The great day had begun. From his agents he already had word the French were on their way and, as Giap had ordered, there was to be no resistance to the parachute drop, though many of his commanders wanted to catch the French while they were in the air and butcher them. This was not to be. The foreigners had to be permitted to establish themselves in the valley and then slowly drawn into the net that had been so meticulously prepared for them. Anyone who fired a single shot during the first air drop was to be summarily executed. All the Viet Minh forces were to stay hidden in the hills.

A sudden desire to take a leak came to a thousand men at approximately the same time as the planes began to descend to nine hundred feet over the approaching valley floor. Coming in from the south they would try to get everyone on the first run onto the drop zone within seconds of each other. The first drop to exit the doors would be those selected for setting up perimeter security. The rest of the flight would hang back a few minutes until they saw what kind of reception was given the security force on the ground. If all was reasonably quiet, then the rest of the 1st BEP would come in on schedule. Red lights came on in three aircraft and the command to stand and hook up was yelled out over the drone of the engines. The sticks were ready as the call to sound off equipment check was made from inside the planes. Voices cried out their number in the stick. Twenty okay, nineteen okay, eighteen okay and so on down the line. The jumpmaster held up his fingers. Two minutes to the drop zone. The lead man, Hermann, shuffled to the door. Hands gripping the sides of the plane, he looked to the front, seeing in the distance several small hamlets on the heart shaped valley floor. The wind whipped at his eyes as the roar of the engines drowned out all other sounds. There was a slap on his shoulder as the jumpmaster yelled out, "Go!" and he was away and falling, his body being thrown through the air by the tornado winds of the plane's propellers. The spine cracking jerk from the old T-7 parachute rattled his teeth with the opening shock. Then there was silence as the planes moved on. Above him, strung out like lights on the gutters of a cabaret, was the rest of his platoon. Each man checked his static lines, then watched the ground, hoping the enemy was not waiting for them and that no sharpshooter had his floating body in his rifle's sights. The sixteen seconds they were in the air seemed like minutes. Then, one by one, they began to hit the ground, going into their parachute landing fall toes down, legs slightly bent, chins tucked in. They hit and rolled, bursting out of their chutes as fast as they could. Releasing their weapons, they spread out to gather in their ammo canisters and turned to belly down in the high grass of the field facing the rim of trees on either side of them.

Gus cursed like a raving lunatic when he hit the ground hard and was twisted by a sudden gust of wind and dragged into a patch of thorn bushes. Langer and Dominic fared better. Making easy landings, they ran to Gus and cut him out of his shroud lines. Jerking the big man free, they too took up positions and waited for something to happen as they watched the ominous looking dense woods. Nothing. All was quiet; not a shot was fired. Langer didn't like it. He knew there were Viets up there. He more than anyone else knew the enemy was watching them. Was this a trap? Were the Viets going to wait until the entire force was on the ground and then make a general assault?

The captain in command of the 1st BEP's unit on the ground waited for a few minutes then told his radio operator to hand him the set. To the waiting planes he gave the word that all was quiet and he was expanding his perimeter to the edge of the trees. He would be there by the time they made their approach and if anything was wrong they would still have time to cancel out the rest of the drop. That was not an idea that appealed to him. That would mean those few men on the ground would be on their own with no support except from a single flight of propeller driven fighter bombers, who would not be able to do much more than give them some cover for a short time until they had to head home for fuel. Once they were gone it was not likely that anyone from the initial landing party would survive too long. Signaling his platoon to move out to the tree line, he handed the radio back to its operator, checked to make certain the safety was off his Mats 49 submachine gun and led the way. The platoons from the other two planes that had made the jump with him were doing the same thing. One platoon positioned itself on each side of the valley and one stayed in the field to give covering fire if needed.

Eyes watched them from the mountains. General Giap removed the German made Zeiss binoculars from his eyes, revealing a full fleshed, handsome face filled with intent and intelligence. Small, neatly dressed in drill khakis, as was Thich, he was a tough man totally dedicated to his cause and Ho Chi Minh. The French rat had stuck its head in the trap to sniff the cheese, but it would still be some time before the rest of the body was inside. Let them build their fortifications and bunkers, string barbed wire and build trenches. Let them commit fully to this valley and little by little he would apply pressure that they would have to respond to, making it impossible for them to evacuate the valley, and ultimately, forcing them to admit defeat at the hands of Asians. French pride would be his secret weapon. That's what would bury them in this lonely, isolated place of no value. Giap had come two hundred miles from his headquarters to the north just to witness the prelude to his finely orchestrated plans. He could see that the rest of the aircraft were now filling the sky with parachutes. He turned to Thich, giving him one of his rare smiles of approval.

"Old friend, we have done well this day. Follow my orders to the letter and we will have not only Vietnam, but all of Southeast Asia as our domain. And once we have the resources of a hundred million people to count on, who knows where we may be able to carry our revolution. The world is open and ripe. The western democracies are sick of war and diseased of spirit. They rot in their own softness of soul. We are the new order of this century. Change is coming, change that can only come from revolution. Keep a watch over my valley. I must leave now, for there are yet many other things which require my attention. But I shall return and be with you when the battle proper has begun.”

The 1st Bataillon Etrangere des Parachutistes was on the deck, fanning out, securing key points to establish their airhead. In the hills all was quiet as were the now empty skies. They were alone but did not plan on remaining that way any longer than necessary. Before the next hour had passed, they were already at work clearing a field for an airstrip. They worked with a fever, knowing this single piece of ground would be their only link to the outside world, and their only hope for survival if the Viets hit them in strength. It was to be a long night before the next dawn, when more of their brothers in arms would be brought in by plane to join them. With the additional numbers they would have their field open for traffic and a series of bunkers ready within the next few days. Once that was done, then let the Viets come at them, for they were the Legion Etrangere.

Thich bade his commander farewell and returned to a site where he could watch the progress of the enemy below. Focusing his glasses on a party of men, he spotted one who, even at this distance, was of monstrous size. He suddenly had a queasy feeling. He was too far away to make out individual features but there was something about one man, standing beside the giant paratrooper, that made him uneasy. Troubled by something he couldn't express, he removed the glasses from his eyes and left to attend a meeting of his staff officers to determine their course of action for the next few days.

General Henri Navarre was elated that the drops had gone so well and that his men were establishing themselves with such great rapidity in the valley. He swore to his junior officers in their club that night that: "Dien Bien Phu will be the major stroke of this war. I will guarantee you that we shall hold it and use it as the anvil against which we shall smash the forces of Giap and his peasants."

The attending officers raised their glasses in salute, filled with admiration for their general and his plan. Dien Bien Phu would be the crowning glory for French arms, a name that would go down in history books as an example of the courage and dedication of the French soldier. It would also prove to the world once and for all that the arms of France were again a force to be reckoned with. Vive Ia France! Vive la Guerre!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Reinforcements arrived nearly every day adding to their strength. The work was endless. Strong points were built with interlocking fields of fire, each of them given the name of a girl. To the north was Gabrielle, then clockwise Beatrice, which covered the trail leading between the mountains to the Black River. And astride the southern route to Na Sam, Isabelle, then Claudine followed by Lalaine.

During the first weeks, French patrols were able to keep the road open though it was not achieved, as they thought by the strength of their arms, but by Giap's orders. Minor skirmishes took place with increasing frequency but never severe enough to hinder the build-up. Giap knew it would not do to have the French become too suspicious by giving them no opposition at all. It would simply not be credible.

Ever so gradually, Giap began to increase the pressure. The patrols of the defenders became more limited in their scope as they ran into stiffer opposition. The roads were mined and cut, leaving the garrison to depend totally on the air for their supplies. By the end of January, Giap had in his web twelve battalions from the 13th DBE, the 2nd and 3rd REI, and 1st BEP. Giap made one more masterstroke before turning his full attention to Dien Bien Phu. Knowing Navarre had always expected him to invade Laos, he sent units of his prized 316th Division toward Luang Prabang, overrunning the French garrison at Moung Khoua. On the seventeenth of February, lead elements of the 316th were in sight of Luang Prabang. Navarre did as Giap expected and sent in five battalions to defend the city, battalions that could not now be sent to Dien Bien Phu. Giap kept them occupied there for a time then ordered his division back. He had a greater need for them now that they had served their purpose in Laos. Giap gave his orders and his guns were finally brought into play, though not fully committed. It was not yet time. He needed to wear his enemy down and deprive them of even the comfort of sleep. He would work on their nerves until each man was totally exhausted. Men in that state make mistakes, and right now Giap had time on his side.

For the time being Langer's platoon had been assigned to Beatrice, where his old unit the 13th DBE was in residence. Patrols went out around the clock, mostly at night, using the cover of darkness to move into the trees red Indian fashion and search out the positions of the enemy. They set up booby traps of their own, laid mines, then got back to the safety of their own wire before the Viets found them.

When they weren't on patrol they were digging. Langer and the others were constantly excavating new trenches, filling sandbags, building bunkers or stringing new aprons of wire. Sores ate at his armpits. The constant sweat and grime that built up in the seams of his jacket made the threads like tiny saws, ripping at the skin a millimeter every time he moved. Gus sat in the corner of a sandbagged wall, popping lice between his thick fingernails. Every now and then he would search the dark mass of hair on his chest and arms, picking through the brush as if he were a baboon. Then, when he had found his prey, he would hold it up for all to witness and triumphantly exclaim to the world: "Behold, now I have once more proved the invincibility of the Legionnaire over the insidious forces of Indochina." He would gloat as he crushed the tiny beast between his nails.

"So die all who would deny us our rightful place in this country, where we should be permitted to rape, pillage, and plunder without hindrance." At this point he would touch his finger to his nose and whisper as if to a conspirator, "You do know that raping and ravaging clears up the zits, don't you?"

Langer had seen the routine too many times in Russia to be impressed and Dominic would merely smile patiently at the antics of his large hairy friend and continue to sharpen his trench knife to a fine edge. Much of Dominic's good looks had faded and he seemed somehow smaller in height. His eyes were sunken and hot looking. Every day he was coming a little closer to the razor's edge. He grew thinner and was unable to sleep. Still he just smiled and nodded his head in approval at whatever Gus was doing and continued to sharpen his knife.

Langer was getting worried. He had seen too many men get that same look in their eyes, eyes that only came alive when they were killing. If they weren't careful, Dominic was going to get himself killed. The man was beginning to like his work too much. He became downright irritable if he was denied the right to go on patrol every night. Exhaustion takes its toll on everyone differently and in the once dashing Italian, it was planting the seeds of madness. He was having to draw on his inner strength to function. Every night he ate a bit more of himself and every day there was less of the old Dominic left.

On the night of the thirteenth of March, Giap ordered that the battle be fully joined. His artillery opened up in all its strength. Two hundred guns rolled their thunder of fire over the valley as his men began their assault. By now he had fifty thousand men in his command against the eleven thousand of the French below him. His first objective: The bastion of Beatrice and the men of the 13th DBE. Taking Beatrice was vital for his artillery. If he could place guns on its crest, direct fire could be aimed at the heart of the main camp. In addition he wanted to make an example of the 13th. When the demi-brigade landed in Indochina it was almost completely German. Now it was almost half Vietnamese. He would let those who served the French know the fate which awaited them. No Vietnamese Legionnaires were to be taken alive. It was with great satisfaction that he gave the order to his gros canons. Fire!

The world caved in on them. Gus rose from the wreckage of the machine gun bunker, which served as home for him and his friends. He lifted a large log on his shoulders to permit Langer and Dominic to crawl out. Around them, flares were illuminating the night sky in eye searing bursts of light. The barrage continued rolling back and forth over the outpost, blasting gaps in the wire and tearing pathways through the mine fields for the advancing waves of Viet Minh "Death Volunteers. At 0610 hours the commander of Beatrice called for the French guns of Colonel Piroth to fire on his own positions. At 0630 hours, he and his staff were killed by a direct hit on their bunker. Other attacks were being made at the same time on Lalaine and Gabrielle to keep them from being able to give any support to Beatrice, the Viet's main objective.

Hermann was a prick but he was a tough soldier. Racing bent over he threw a light machine gun at Gus and told him to get to work. Langer searched through the rubble of the bunker, found his Mats 49, grabbed some extra magazines and threw himself against what remained of the bunker wall. Dominic worked as a loader for Gus. The initial shock of the barrage was now lifting to permit the Viet infantry to advance. With a vengeance, the Legionnaires of the 13th DBE came out of their holes to face the human waves of Oriental faces that were sweeping toward them. Ignoring their own casualties they used the bodies of their own wounded and dead to throw on top of barbed wire barriers, then used them as bridges to cross over the wire barriers. From three sides the Viets swarmed over everything between them and their objective. They would take Beatrice this night or die in the attempt. Hundreds of them did perish in the first few minutes. Langer tried to pick his shots but there was no sense in it; there was no way to miss. Gus raked his weapon from side to side like a scythe, the light machine gun cutting down men in packs as Dominic kept the belts feeding into the breech.

Cries warning of their coming came from two sides of the camp. Without being told, the Legionnaires of the 13th fixed their bayonets as the first wave of Viet Minh charged into the outer perimeter. Coming out of their trenches and holes the Legionnaires met them with steel. A thousand individual combats took place in the burning light of a dozen flares.

Gus picked up his machine gun. The damned thing had a stoppage and there was no time to reduce it. He swung the twenty pound weapon like a club, crushing the brain case of a Viet Dai Ui. The enemy captain died but behind him came four more straight for the bunker. Langer took out two before his weapon ran dry and, as with Gus, there was no time to reload. Using the lessons learned in Russia, he used an entrenching tool to stab one of them. He had to hold the still kicking body down to free the sharpened blade of the shovel from the victim's chest. Dominic didn't wait for the next one to reach them. He went out over the top of the trench after him, forgetting in the heat of battle that his knife was his only weapon. He'd left his rifle behind. Parrying like a ballet dancer, he dodged the thrust from a Russian bayonet and slit the man's throat as he went past. Then he went after two more he'd spotted hung up in the wire. When the Viets saw him coming they broke and ran behind leaving large portions of their hide on the wire. They ran back the way they had come, only to be shot immediately by their own officers.

Hermann was throwing grenades like a madman, as fast as he could pull the pins. The crews in the mortar pits were setting their weapons so the rounds went nearly straight up to fall within yards of their own positions. They had to fall back, dropping grenades down the tubes of their mortars to prevent the Viets from taking them.

An order from a Viet Minh major to take some prisoners brought another rush of Viets into the bunker where Langer was with the others. They never left the bunker alive. The small men tried to swarm over Gus like the lice in the hair on his back and chest. He shook them off, breaking their necks with his paws. He was bleeding from a dozen cuts as Dominic and Langer butchered the ones Gus didn't kill. The bodies of the dead Viets, as well as a couple who weren't quite dead, were tossed back up on top of the sandbags to give them some additional cover. Machine gun bullets from their own comrades ended the cries for mercy from the wounded Viet Minh.

From the north wall came the cry, “Reculez!" telling them to fall back. The Viets were in among them. Giap's men came in so thick that if weapons burned out barrels or jammed, their owners had to fight with whatever they could get their hands on. As it had been so many times on the Russian front, there were just too many of them to kill. An entire trench of Legionnaires were smothered by hundreds of Vietnamese who literally buried them under their bodies. Many of the Viets in their haste to kill, exploded hand grenades, holding them to their bodies as they hurled themselves at the hated Legionnaires. They died but they had achieved their purpose. Another breach was made in the line and a thousand more of their comrades poured through in a flood of blood.

A Chinese potato masher grenade went off, stunning Dominic. Gus picked up the Italian, throwing him over his shoulder as he fled. Grabbing his machine gun on the way, he pulled back to a mortar pit twenty meters to the rear as Langer gave him covering fire. The Viets pushed the defenders back foot by foot and every one of them paid for in death. Men lay in clumps together locked in the death struggle. The radio operator of the 13th frantically called for more fire support from the other outposts. Not much came. They had their own problems to deal with. Using a Walther P-38, the operator killed three Viet Minh who burst into the door of his bunker before a burst from the Ppsh 41 sniper's rifle tore his chest out of him and smashed his radio. The fight raged back and forth but the weight of the Viet Minh attack was not to be denied. For the French, with every passing minute there were fewer men to resist the human tide rolling over them. At last they held only one bunker on the west wall.

Gus got Dominic back to consciousness and they were working again. Langer blew two Viets off Herman’s back. Even if they didn't like the son of a bitch they needed every man. Hermann thought nothing of it. He had other things on his mind, namely strangling to death a Viet Minh sargent.

Finally realizing it was hopeless, Hermann yelled out for Langer and the others to follow him. Leaping over dead bodies they ran for the wire, searching by the glaring light of the flares for the small colored markers that showed the safe route out of the camp. Crawling and scrambling, they twisted their way past bodies, not having time to stop and kill the wounded Viet Minh. Shots and grenades followed after them. The camp was doomed, of that they were certain. There was nothing they could do to save their comrades left behind. Even now they were being put to the bayonet as the Viet Minh looted their bodies, taking everything that could be used. Bodies were stripped naked of their uniforms and boots, and rings were cut off swollen fingers. Nearly three hundred men of the 13th died. But almost two hundred had managed to break out. They headed back to the apron of wire surrounding the airstrip, responding to the challenge of trigger happy sentries with curses as they crawled belly down through the wire. Two men following Gus were blown up by their own mines. Four Poles died when they didn't respond fast enough to challenges spoken in French. Once they were recognized, hands pulled them over the sides.

There were few questions as to what had happened. By the light of a flare, they saw the red Viet Minh flag being raised. Beatrice had fallen. The first victory went to Giap, but he had paid a price for it. Nearly two thousand of his own men had sent their spirits to their ancestors and a like number were returned to the mountain hospitals with wounds.

Dry mouthed, chests pounding, the survivors gratefully accepted the offer of canteens. Gus rose up and looked around to see who was left. He gave Hermann a dirty look, saying testily. "I see you're still with us. I never have any luck at all." Hermann was too exhausted to respond. He lay, sides heaving, on the floor of a foxhole. He would remember the insult later. Right now it was tough enough just to catch his breath.

The ground attacks continued until dawn, then the Viet Minh artillery took over. Their favorite target, as usual, was the airstrip. Accurate fire kept the strip pockmarked with shell craters, making it extremely hazardous for any aircraft to attempt to land. Crews of native laborers and Legionnaires worked endlessly to keep it open. There was no getting out now. They were stuck. Their only hope had to come from the outside world and all that world would do was sit and watch. Only four men of the platoon they had jumped in with survived that night.

Two days later they were ordered to go to Isabelle as replacements. Hermann didn't like the orders very much. Isabelle was the furthest away from the airstrip. If anyone was going to get out alive it wouldn't be from there. The airstrip was the only way out. They were still managing to get some of the wounded evacuated now and then. Hermann considered the merits of a self-inflicted wound, then dismissed it. He was too fond of his own body to be able to damage himself to any degree.

At Isabelle, Hermann lauded the capabilities of his three survivors, saying they were the best scouts in the Legion. His praise was not designed to do them any good. All Hermann wanted was for them to get their asses shot off and night patrols were the best way to accomplish that without any danger to himself. He would not be going with them.

A wiry young Vietnamese named Xuan attached himself to the three Legionnaires. He had been part of the company of indigene volunteers who had come in last week. He had been sent as a runner to Isabelle and remained there once Captain Boissy learned that he had once lived in this area and knew the terrain. It seemed logical that if he was going to send out the three men of Hermann 's squad to scout then they would need someone like Xuan to help. The only benefit that had come from the attack on Beatrice was that it seemed to have blasted Dominic out of his growing madness. The same things that drove him mad brought him back to his senses. Gus as always was hungry.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

During the third week of March, a feeling began to grow among the defenders that things were not as good as they seemed. Especially when on the fifteenth of March after Beatrice fell, Colonel Piroth, in charge of the defender's artillery, apologized for his failure to deal with the Viet Minh guns and exploded a grenade against his body.

Intelligence had at last gotten some true idea of the Viet's capabilities, reporting that they had stockpiled huge amounts of ammunition for their artillery mortars and anti-aircraft guns, much greater amounts than they had thought the Viets capable of. And now they were in a position to control all access to Dien Bien Phu by either land or air. None of this was a surprise to those in the dusty valley. It became clear to General Cogny when on an inspection visit for General Navarre, his plane was bracketed by very accurate fire from the Viet 105's, which destroyed several other planes on the ground. He managed to get away by the skin of his teeth.

Behind the first ridge of mountains, General Giap went over his plans by the light of a kerosene lantern. He sat with Thich and his officers in an underground bunker, one of a series of tunnels that served the Viets. Giap swore this time he would win. This was the right place and the right moment. Once before he had made the mistake of trying to fight before he was ready. The results of that had been disastrous, setting them back years in their plans. He would not make the same error again. The lesson learned years ago was indelibly impressed on his every waking thought. Here he would win, if only the Americans didn't intervene. He knew the French ego and their reluctance to try new tactics. They were slow to adapt to change; the Germans had proved that. He would use those weaknesses of pride and stubbornness to bleed them dry. He would make them pay the price for their rape of his country and people.

Langer wondered how much this piece of useless real estate was going to cost France in terms of blood. He moved forward hunched over slightly, his Mats 49 submachine gun extended in front of him ready to fire. The heat of the night was the kind that one could only find in the tropics. It caused a heavy, damp, cloying stickiness that sapped the strength and dulled the senses. Sweat ran freely causing the body salts to streak one's uniform, making its own camouflage patterns. Just in front of him, on point, was Xuan. His slight figure moved in and out of the shadows of the night, blending for a moment to be lost in the darker patterns of the trees and brush. Then it would emerge again for a second when the moon broke through the leafy canopy over their heads.

This was a reconnaissance mission, not a killing patrol. They were to avoid action if possible. Langer had been ordered by Captain Boissy of the 1st BEP try to locate where the staging area for the next Viet attack would be coming from. If they could spot that then they would be able to zero in their guns on the area and have an air strike standing by to blast the hell out of them.

Xuan moved slow but steady, twisting in and out to avoid the grasping claws of thorn bushes and branches. Behind Langer was Dominic who was very good at silent killing.

Langer and Gus knew about his circus career but didn't know what had brought him to this place. It was the deaths of two of his female partners during his shows that had led him to accept the hospitality of the Legion in order to avoid embarrassing questions about his love life.

They had made a semicircle after leaving their own perimeter and were now nearly three kilometers to the northeast of their outpost in the woods between Isabelle and the fortifications of Dien Bien Phu. Langer gave a low hiss to catch Xuan's attention and indicated to him to find a place to take a break. Xuan led the way unerringly to a spot where they had a clear view of Dien Bien Phu below them. They could also watch the muzzle flashes of Viet snipers taking pot-shots. Langer removed his field glasses from their case and held them to his eyes. Taking his time, he made a slow scan of the area spotting enemy positions and marking them on his map. Thanks to the clear night and a full moon the extra strength of the binoculars enabled him to observe clearly anything that wasn't concealed by trees and brush. A man could learn a lot if he just stayed in one place for a time and watched. If he knew how to analyze what he saw, little things could mean more than they appeared to. Dominic stayed a bit behind them, lower down on the hill in a clump of brush to make sure that they hadn't been seen or followed. It took some time but finally Langer caught a glimpse of something that looked to be important. A line of Viets came out of the trees and were crossing a clearing several hundred meters below them heading toward the junction of the hills between what had been the villages of Ban Ten and Ban Nhong Nhai. What made them of interest was that they were carrying stretchers and Langer could see several of them with bags hanging from their shoulders by straps. He made a note of their direction and pointed them out to Xuan. He raised his hands, held up one finger and touched his watch with it. Xuan nodded his head in agreement at the unspoken order and slid off down the hill after the stretcher bearers. Langer needed to have his suspicions confirmed, but for now all he could do was wait. He had given Xuan one hour to return. If he wasn't back by then they would leave and hope that Xuan could make it back to Isabelle on his own.

A rumble of man-made thunder rolled over the hills as a barrage of Viet artillery rained destruction down on the main base. It was answered by a like response from the deceased Colonel Piroth's own heavy guns. Each fired three salvos then fell silent to let the lesser arms have their chance. Eighty one and 60mm mortars from both sides reached out for each other in the dark as their spotters tried to figure out the location of their enemies. They followed the thin trail of fire left by the burning charges on the tails of the mortars as they streaked silently overhead to land with dull thumps in either the bush or on a sandbagged bunker. A distant shriek came from the hill to the left where one of the bombs had hit, and then all was silent again, each side waiting for the next event.

After ten minutes, Langer snapped his fingers twice to signal Dominic to come up. The Italian slid on his belly and came up beside Langer. Even in the dark, Dominic's teeth appeared to be twice as white and large as anyone else's had a right to be. He didn't ask where Xuan was and really didn't care. He knew that Langer would do the right thing. He had wondered about his sergent more than once. Though the man had been with the Germans he didn't really seem to be one of them and he spoke Italian, though he used phrases that were sometimes very old fashioned. He also had an accent that he couldn't place. But then, many who spoke several languages had accents that were a blending of the tongues they knew.

A night bird screamed somewhere. Its cry faded off into what sounded like the laughter of a hysterical woman. A chill ran through their bodies, now that they had been still long enough for the body heat of their exertions to ease off. A thin breeze slipped over them to cool their sweat. Dominic sucked the back of his teeth wishing that he was back in Rome on the Via Veneto, having coffee and watching the round hipped girls of Rome walk past him. These Oriental women! Their butts were too small for a man to get a good grip on. He wanted to feel the fullness of a ripe European woman again.

Langer checked his watch. Xuan still had twenty minutes to go then they would have to leave. He didn't like staying in one spot too long. It was always easier on his mind when he was moving. He shifted around to where he could get a look at the dark shadows of the mountain behind him. His face touched his submachine gun. The smell of gun oil was not unpleasant. He thought to himself, take care of your weapons and they will take care of you. The dark shadow that rose behind them was where the artillery fire of the Viets came from. He wished that he was able to pinpoint them, but the Viets were clever, and most of the time they fired from the opposite side of the mountain so their muzzle flashes couldn't be easily seen. And they moved their locations frequently. A single crack jerked his head around. His eyes tried to pierce the gloom looking for its source. It came again and he breathed a bit easier, lowering his weapon but still ready to fire if need be. A dark form detached itself from the base of a mango tree and swiftly moved up to him. Xuan lay down beside him. Langer could smell the sweat on him as the small man tried to control his breathing. They spoke in hushed whispers. Once Xuan had made his report, Langer motioned for them to begin the return journey to the dubious safety of Isabelle. They still had two hours till dawn; he didn't want to be caught out of their positions when the sun rose. Dominic took his place at the rear of their mini column as Xuan led the way again, taking them back along a different route than they had used on the way out. It was wise never to use the same path twice if it could be avoided. Patterns were certain death sooner or later. They all knew it, and made no protest when the way back was rougher than the one they'd come out on.

The most delicate part of their mission was when they neared their own wire. That was when they had the greatest chance of being spotted by the Viets, and if they didn't identify themselves fast enough, they would have a good chance of being shot down by their own men. It wasn't unusual for the Viet Minh to know the passwords. They would torture them out of prisoners, using them to let them get close to the wire. Besides that, Hermann was on guard duty tonight and Langer didn't quite trust him not to take advantage of the opportunity and settle his score with them by overreacting a little when they came in. It had happened more than once that members of a patrol had been shot up by their own men upon returning.

They stopped for a moment to catch their breath at the edge of a cluster of bamboo trees. Then Langer sent each of them off for a quick look to see if any Viets were close to them. They returned within five minutes, shaking their heads in the negative. They had seen nothing, which really didn't mean anything except that the Viets were well hidden.

They would come back in on the southeast side of the camp and Langer hoped the defenders had their signals right. This time he took the lead. Leaving Xuan in the lead might make the patrol a bit more jumpy. Dominic moved up beside Langer and they left the bamboo trees on their bellies, crawling through knee high grass until they reached the ditch that led into the stream bed. Langer wished that he'd had some pads for his elbows and knees. All the crawling he had been doing for the last few days was wearing sore spots on them.

They had about two hundred meters to go, fifty more until they reached the stream. Freezing in place, Langer sniffed the air. A wisp from the predawn breeze brought something to him. The smell of nouc nam! the pungent fish sauce that no self-respecting Vietnamese would dine without. As Xuan was behind him, that meant there was someone else up ahead that was, more than likely, not very friendly.

Dominic bumped into his heels and Xuan came to a dead halt. Pointing up ahead, Langer made a questioning gesture with an open palm. Dominic nodded in understanding and raised his own head to sniff the air. Xuan reminded himself where he was; it was too risky for him to take a chance on making any sound by passing Langer to take the lead.

Langer loosened his combat knife in the sheath strapped to his boot, then moved on, keeping his belly raised a couple of inches off the ground so there wouldn't be any sound of his clothing or gear scraping the earth. He moved one careful inch at a time. The gully they were in took a turn to the right. He nearly put his hand on the hard rubber sole of a sandal made from a truck's tire. His heart stopped for a moment. He tried to focus his eyes to see further ahead, beyond the prone figure of the Viet Minh he was behind. He could make out several other shapes and in the shadows of a hollow he thought he could see the figures of several men bunched together. They were probably a group of sappers with bangalore torpedoes and explosives to blow holes in the camp's apron of concertina wire.

If there was one unit, there had to be more. And there would be others to give covering fire to their comrades who would soon try to blast a path through the wire. That also meant there was more than one light machine gun out there that he couldn't see. He felt a hand on his leg and nearly jumped out of his skin. Dominic was touching him in a questioning manner, wanting to know what the hell was going on and why he had stopped again. Langer reached back with his Mats 49 and tapped Dominic twice on the hand, then twice more saying that he could make out four men for certain. Dominic did the same to Xuan. They were too near the enemy to hold a conference, so they just waited, ready to follow up on whatever Langer planned to do. Whatever it was, they knew it would happen soon. The false dawn was beginning to appear. From the bed of the stream, mist rose in ghostly tendrils over the high grass and drifted into every dip and hollow. A door opened in the camp, probably from the communications bunker, giving off a dim glow and then winked out seconds later as the door was shut. They had nearly fifty yards to go and they had to run for it now, before the Viets began their attack. If they didn't they would be caught between the two forces.

Dominic and Xuan could sense Langer tensing. After fighting this long they didn't have to see things to know they were happening. It was like working with good musicians who had played together many times before. Instinctively, they knew what the next note from the others was going to be. The Viet Minh in front of Langer shifted his position a bit. Moving his leg, he nearly kicked Langer in the face. This one had to go. Langer lay his Mats 49 down and gently pulled his combat knife from his boot. Raising up on his fingertips and toes, he cleared his body from the ground, his belly wet from the damp of the mist and his sweat. He moved his legs up under him quietly, ever so careful not to make the slightest sound. Then, with a half sliding motion, he covered the Viet's body with his own. One hand went for his mouth to shut off any cry as the knife struck deep in the body, under the right rib cage. Langer used his heavier weight to keep the smaller man pinned as he struck three times more. Dominic moved up when Langer made his attack and held the Viet's feet still so they couldn't hammer against the earth. For what seemed an eternity the little man struggled under the weight of the man on his back. Then gradually his struggles lessened as his life force drained into his inner abdominal cavity. Langer was careful not to let go of his mouth too soon. He eased his hand off slowly so the last breath of air trapped in the dead Viet 's lungs wouldn't escape in a death rattle that could be heard by his comrades up ahead.

Dominic and Xuan moved up alongside of Langer in the grass. They followed his pointing weapon to where they could see the Viet sappers bunched together. From the immediate area around them, they began to make out hushed voices, the muffled sounds of weapons being cocked and of bodies shifting positions. If they were going to do anything it had to be now. Langer slung his submachine gun on his back and held up his combat knife. The others did likewise. Dominic and Langer were in front. There wasn't enough room in the gully for all three to move simultaneously. Holding their breath they inched closer to the backs of the Viet Minh suicide team. There were four of them; he could see they had elastic socks of plastic explosives strapped to them. When they hit the wire they would not only blow a hole through it but blow up themselves as well.

There was no need for them to confer about what had to be done. When they were in place, they moved low to the damp earth keeping below the level of the grass on the ridge of the trench. Hurling themselves as silently as they could into the hole with the sappers, knives struck. One tried to scream, but Xuan forced his fist into the man's open mouth, choking off his cry as his bayonet ripped open the sapper's belly. Lying on top of their victims, the three waited, sucking in air to replenish the oxygen that fear and exertion had burned up.

A whispered cry in Vietnamese reached them from the left, asking what was the matter. Xuan responded in the same manner: "Nothing is wrong. I just got sick to my stomach and threw up." A small thin laugh told them his story was believed. It wasn't unusual for a man who was about to commit suicide to empty his gut.

They were now only about thirty yards from their first line of wire and the place where they would have to get to reach the safe path through the mines and trip wires. Originally they were to get within hailing distance and call out the password, then they would be let through the wire without being fired on. Now they would have to get up to the wire without the Viets gunning them down. If they didn't move fast enough and a fire fight started, they would be caught between both sides.

They held a quick whispered conference and decided to simply break and run for the wire, hoping the Viets would mistake them for their own sappers long enough for them to get clear. Setting their heels against the bottom of the pit, they bunched their leg muscles, which were trembling from the long night's patrol. Each took a deep breath and tensed, then they broke up and out, keeping their bodies low. They ran through the waist high mist hanging over the grass as fast as they could. Langer was in the lead, with Dominic close on his ass. Xuan's smaller legs tried to make up the difference by moving twice as fast as his taller friends. They had made it about halfway when the first shots came after them. They had been recognized and the Viets were trying to cut them down. Bullets snapped by their ears. One tugged at Langer's jacket. Once the firing started, he and Dominic started yelling to the Legionnaires behind the sandbagged wall to hold their fire. The cry came just in time to stop Hermann from pulling the trigger on his light machine gun. Not because he wanted to, but because a hand grasped his wrist and squeezed gently, nearly cracking the bones in it. A schoolmasterly voice said, "You don't really want to do that now, do you? It would make Uncle Gus very upset. "

Regretfully, he eased off the trigger pressure, knowing that he would have had a good kill. But, c'est la guerre. Maybe next time and, if he was lucky, he would be able to add the gorilla to his score.

They hit the first apron of wire, sliding on their stomachs under it. Cursing and yelling, they twisted through the concertina wire where it had not been staked down, allowing them to get through without ripping themselves up or getting tangled in it. From the French side came covering fire. It raked over their heads taking the attention of the Viets away from them. On hands and knees, they scrambled along the safe path until they were able to get next to the sandbagged walls. In turn, each threw himself over the side to land on his face, gasping for breath. Xuan was the last and he landed directly on top of Dominic, who was holding his sides where a cramp doubled him over. Dominic swore this was it. He was going back to show business after this engagement was over.

A hairy paw helped Langer to his feet as his nostrils were assailed by the blended odor of wine and native home brew. Without looking up, he knew who it was. Gus!

Gus grinned down at Langer, showing the dim glow from the single gold tooth set in front of the cavern that served him as a mouth.

"Am I forever going to have to look after you? If it hadn't been for me you would have starved to death in Russia in '43. Now I have to start all over again. Didn't you learn anything by my example? If you would just stay in the enlisted ranks you wouldn't get sent on so many patrols."

Langer mumbled something sarcastic in reply and then moved on, with Xuan trailing, down into the trench leading to the interior of the camp and the command post. Dominic was allowed to go on to his bunk. There was nothing he could tell Captain Boissy that Xuan and Langer didn't know. Raising the canvas flap, Langer went inside to make his report, leaving Gus to ponder what they were going to have for breakfast. His stomach grumbled at the delicious thought of a two inch thick slice of young water buffalo; of course, he would have been just as pleased at the possibility of eating the north end of a southbound hyena.

Langer removed his forage hat on entering the bunker. It was dark inside and the air was heavy and oppressive. Captain Boissy was leaning up against a box of thirty caliber ammo, eyes closed, but Langer knew he was awake. On his thin face was a nervous tic that he'd acquired a week ago. It only left him when he was sleeping. Langer could see minor muscle spasms working at Boissy's jaw, but he didn't open his eyes.

"What is happening out there?" He hadn't bothered to go outside. The minor fire fight that had just taken place had already faded away. The Viets had withdrawn after their attempt to breach the wire had been blown. They would come back later in the night, or perhaps the next morning, but they would return. That was for certain.

Langer sat down heavily on a box of rations. He opened his canteen and took a pull to cut the dryness of his throat before answering. Xuan found a corner to stand in, watching them and waiting until he was asked to contribute his information.

Boissy opened his eyes, both of them red rimmed with traces of pus around the lids.

"Well!" he repeated. "What is going on?"

Langer spat a portion of the water out of his mouth. "They're going to hit us, and soon I would say, probably later tonight or early in the morning. We spotted a detail of medics moving up. I had Xuan follow them. Tell him what you saw, Xuan."

Xuan eased himself off the wall he had been resting against. "The Viet Minh have moved an aid station up to this spot." He'd moved to the area map on top of the field desk and was pointing. "I would say from the amount of men and medical supplies they were bringing in, that it's going to be a big one. They are planning on having plenty of work to do. "

Boissy checked the spot indicated on his map. "Then it's us they're going to hit. They're too far away to do much good if they were going after Lalaine or Beatrice. No! It's going to be us again, gentlemen. Good enough. We'll be waiting." Then he added bitterly, "Of course we don't have any choice but to wait. Now go ahead and get some sleep or do whatever you want. You are relieved from duty for the rest of the day, unless things pick up a bit. "

He pointed a finger at Langer before he left. "Will you please do something about Gus? He has been pestering the hell out of me for a pass to the nearest village. He says he just wants to see if they have a decent restaurant."

In spite of his exhaustion a grin forced its way on to Langer scarred face. "If there isn't a restaurant there, I'll give you odds that in two hours he could arrange to have the Viet Minh build one just for him."

Boissy shook his head. "Is he really serious? I don't know how to read him. "

Langer nodded his head. "If Gus is talking about food, women or booze, and that's all he ever talks about, then he is absolutely serious."

Boissy nodded his head. "That's what I thought, but tell him, no! He can't go out of the camp and there'll be no passes. Passes!" He laughed. "The man is obviously mad. You know that, don't you?"

Langer answered with a grin. "You're not the first one to think that, sir. But when things get tough have Gus stay close to you. You won't regret it."

He left to find his sack, which consisted of two molding blankets in a niche cut in the side of the clay walls of the underground bunker. He didn't complain. There'd been times when having a hole like this would have been an indescribable luxury. The only other item of interest for the day was that Gus had found several large grass snakes while he was digging a new trench. From the gleam in Gus's piggish eyes, Langer almost pitied Hermann for whatever it was Gus had in mind for him. No one else at Isabelle was worthy of this kind of attention. Well, he'd probably find out tomorrow what his hairy friend had in mind.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Hermann rolled over in his sleep, restless. The night air was heavy and his dreams were troubled by alternating fits of memory. Memories of the girl he had killed, and of his hatred for Gus and his friends. His dreams kept him from hearing the soft shuffling steps entering his bunker room. Ever so slowly large fingers lifted the olive drab blanket at the end of the makeshift bunk. From a lantern outside the room there was barely enough light to make out the greenish, squirming things in the thick fingers as they slipped the snakes under the covers, then gently tucked in the ends of the blankets. The figure crept back into the tunnel hallway and down the passage to wait.

Hermann shifted in his sleep. He had his shirt off but had kept his boots and pants on. However, the buttons were undone and open to the groin to make his rest easier, less constricted. A coolness touched his warm flesh by the pubic region. Another length of sinuous muscle slid up to the matted hairs of his chest. Hermann groaned and stirred in his sleep. The slithering forms under his covers explored their new surroundings, forked tongues flickering out, tasting the aura of their new host. One was tired from the manhandling it had received earlier and picked the warmness of Hermann 's armpit for a resting place. It slid into the hair and began to curl up.

Hermann 's eyes jerked open, his mind instantly aware that something was not right. The snake by his belly moved up toward his chest. Cold icy sweat burst out of his pores.

Oh my God! he thought, kraits or cobras are crawling on me. He was afraid to move or yell. It might aggravate his two sliding parasites. He tried to whisper a cry for help but nothing could get out of his suddenly dry mouth with the thick tongue in it that wouldn't work. Uncontrollable tremors ran along his body, and the snakes moved in response to it. Hermann nearly fainted. One of them was moving up under the blanket getting closer to his face. He could feel it crawling through the hair of his chest. He knew he was going to be bitten. Chin down as low as he could get, he felt the unseen things progress along his body. His heart almost stopped when the serpent popped its head out from under the covers and stuck its tongue out at him. Hermann screamed. He couldn't take it any longer. He burst out of his bunk, the snakes dropping from him. Grabbing his Mats 49, he chopped his bunk into splinters. The blasting of the bullets nearly deafened him in the confines of his small underground room.

Screams followed by several long bursts of automatic fire snapped Langer's eyes open. Running feet and groans could be heard as men raced for their positions, thinking an attack was coming. They were halted by Hermann 's appearance, holding a Mats 49 submachine gun in one hand and in the other, the tattered remains of two four foot long grass snakes. He was screaming, face white, eyes, wild and sweaty.

"I'll kill the son of a bitch. I'll cut his balls off and feed them to him. Where is that overgrown lump of dog shit?" He started down the hall to where Gus slept, bumping his head on one of the log rafters, nearly knocking himself down.

Staggering back to his knees, he grabbed a stack of magazines for the submachine gun. Throwing the mangled snakes down, he slapped a full magazine into the gun.

"I'll blow his guts out and feed them to the pigs." Still a bit tired, Langer got out of his bunk fully dressed as always. He took the pistol by his bunk and stepped into the hall. Hermann was just passing his niche to get to Gus's room when he felt something cold pressing at the back of his neck.

"I don't think you really want to do that, Sargent Hermann, because if you did, then I would have to blow your throat out. It's late now. Why don't you just go back to sleep? You don't know for certain that Gus put the snakes in with you. They could have crept in here on their own and picked you because you're the closest thing in here to being one of them."

Gulping air, Hermann slowly set the weapon down, his chest heaving with fear and anger. Seething, he turned to look Langer in the face ignoring the pistol now, pointing straight at his nose.

"One of these days, just remember that. No one can do something like this to me and live. You'll all pay, and pay soon."

Langer lowered the pistol. "Well, if you're going to get even you had better do it soon. Because I think our little friends out there on the mountain are going to try and beat you to it. So knock the shit off and I'll tell Gus to go somewhere else to play”

Dominic came down the tunnel carrying a tin of canned meat, his ration for the day. He ignored Hermann and addressed Langer. "The rest of the 2nd BEP is coming in tonight. They should be here within the hour. Think we should go topside and see if we can give them any help?"

Hermann stuck his face into Dominic's. "Make reports to me. I'm still the senior man here!" Dominic stared at him as if the sargent was retarded and spat a hunk of phlegm on the floor.

"Like I said," he repeated to Langer, "think we should go up? They'll probably need a lot of support to get down alive."

Hermann stomped away back to his room, still grumbling under his breath about death and revenge.

Langer shook his head. Maybe Gus was going a bit too far in his harassment of Hermann. It would be better to just kill the son of a bitch and get it over with. Dominic led the way topside. Even in the dark the evidence of fierce conflict was everywhere. If a man wasn't careful he could break his leg or his neck just trying to get from one place to another. The attacks of the last few days had turned the once orderly looking outpost into a morass of broken timbers, collapsed bunkers and shell holes. The litter of war was everywhere. Spent cartridge casings, empty boxes for the mortars and recoilless rifles lay everywhere. There was no time for any clean-up to be done. It was all they could do to keep their main bunkers in usable repair.

The strongest bunker was where the wounded were kept under the tender eye of a Somalian medic, a giant black man, who still wore the marks of his tribal scars on his dark oily face. He treated his charges with unbelievable tenderness, worrying over each one as if he were his own child.

In the mountains, the Viet gunners were already ranging their sights for the next day's targets. As usual, the airstrip was one of them. They knew that if they kept the airstrip inoperable the camp would have to fall. The fighters and bombers of the French air force had been unable to reduce their effectiveness. The dozens of antiaircraft guns concealed in the trees and rocks were taking too deadly a toll on the French's thin number of operational aircraft, and there were other needs to be filled elsewhere.

Claudine was getting it again, as was Lalaine. Several of the outposts had been lost and retaken three or four times and every time the enemy became a bit stronger, the Legion a bit weaker. On the twenty fifth of March, the French lost part of Lalaine and now the Legion and the Viet Minh were killing each other daily at distances of less than twenty five meters. The Viet Minh had already begun their program of digging trenches toward the French positions. Each day they came a bit closer and all knew that when they were close enough they would burst out at them and the fighting would be hand to hand.

The outposts were keeping their activities to a minimum, saving it for when the planes came in. The 2nd BEP would be trying to jump over the airstrip so they'd be inside friendly wire. In the dark, Langer knew that many of them would land outside the relative safety of the airstrip and have to get back inside as best they could. Once the plane's engines were heard by the Viet Minh in the mountains hell would break loose in the valley. It was the ninth of April and Langer wondered why more men were being sent into the meat grinder. If something drastic didn't take place to change the circumstances, all the men trapped inside this ruined valley would either be killed or taken prisoner. The Viets sent up a few illuminating rounds from the mortars to cast their artificial, eye searing glare over Claudine and Gabrielle. There was no response from the defenders. They had their orders; they were to wait. It wouldn't be long now. What at first sounded like the droning of a few mosquitoes, gradually increased into a distant swarm. The planes were coming.

All lights were off on the approaching aircraft. They were coming in blacked out. At the airstrip, Langer could see some kind of light coming on. Cans of petrol had been set on fire to mark the drop zone and guide the planes in. They'd have only one chance. The planes were close now, passing nearly overhead. In the night sky, they appeared as a flight of dark swallows sailing through the skies. He guessed they would be jumping at about six hundred feet, with no reserve chutes. At that altitude there would not be time for a second chance.

The night was beginning to erupt. From the Viet Minh dozens of flares and illuminating rounds were being fired to light up the sky. The defending camps responded with all they had, firing their own illuminating rounds over the mountains to blind the eyes of the Viet gunners. At the same time they fired what remained of their one hundred five shells in support of the drop. At Lalaine, the only remaining quad fifty hosed down the western ridges as all the camps opened up in a mad picture of rapid fire. Tracers cut through the dark like bleeding arrows of fire and the Viet Minh answered in kind. Isabelle was too far away to do much good with any light weapons support, but her mortar crews were working feverishly, plastering the jungle and brush to give their comrades in the air an extra second before they leaped into the night to be met by enemy machine gun fire.

By the light of a dozen flares, Langer and his men could see the blossoming of parachutes and tiny bodies drifting helpless in the dark sky, hoping they would not overshoot the airstrip. They began to land. Nearly four hundred men came in, hitting the ground, rolling, snapping out of their now dangerous parachutes to grab weapons and race for the safety of the nearest bunker. Over fifty missed the wire and had to fight their way back in, ignoring the crash of one hundred five shells all around them and the increasingly accurate fire of Viet Minh automatic weapons. Over a dozen died on the wire, or tripped mines and booby traps laid by their own comrades but the majority made it to the temporary safety of the bunkers surrounding the airstrip. One plane, bringing up the rear, veered off course to avoid running into a bright stream of antiaircraft fire directly in front of it. The cargo master must have been edgy because two small parachutes came out of the door to drift near the wire of the outer perimeter of Isabelle. Langer hadn't noticed that they had been joined by Xuan until the smaller man touched his arm, pointing toward the wire to the left front where the bundles were falling to the earth. Before they touched down, Gus was over the side racing for the bundles. A burst of machine gun fire kicked up dust around him but he was single minded in his pursuit of the bundles. Cutting the shroud lines, he returned, leaping over his own wire like a mammoth gazelle. His last leap threw him back over the sandbag wall, a three-foot square, canvas wrapped bundle in each paw.

Langer nearly slapped him across the head.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, you fool? Don't you know you could have gotten yourself killed out there? What's so important about those goddamned bundles? You don't even know what's in them?"

Gus grinned good naturedly, tossing one of the bundles to Xuan. "Take it easy, mon ami. Packages of this size mean one thing. Food or drink and, if we're lucky, both!"

The night's show was over. The 2nd BEP was on the ground and already being broken up to replace those that had been lost at Lalaine and Claudine.

Once again Gus proved his instincts were right. The packages contained delicacies for the general's table. There were three magnums of Dom Perignon, truffles in wine sauce, canned chickens, potted meats, cheeses and a whole ham. The other items included newspapers and some badly needed penicillin, which Gus graciously consented to have sent by the next runner to the hospital. The rest he claimed as legitimate spoils of war.

CHAPTER TWENTY

During the night, two squads from the 2nd BEP made it to Isabelle. Leading them was Lieutenant Villon. Meeting Langer and the rest of the crew, he found that instead of being welcomed, they wished he and the others had stayed where it was safe. Villon shook his young head. "Do you think that I am going to miss out on what is promising to be the greatest feat of French arms since World War One?" There was no reply to a question like that, so they let it slide as Hermann, asserting his rank as top non-com, took Villon aside to give him a briefing on what was taking place and to show him around the camp. It didn't take long for the lieutenant to understand what they'd meant by staying where it was safe, but all his life he had wished for the chance to prove himself in a desperate battle. Now he had that chance and he would not fail himself or France. There were more important things in life than dying.

During successive nights, several more drops came in to bring volunteers from the 3rd and 5th REI, most of whom had never made a parachute jump before and never would again. A noble exercise in futility.

Thich watched the drops. They were of no importance. It only added more men to the bag and made their inevitable triumph that much greater. Everything was going according to plan. For the next month, the Viet Minh kept unceasing pressure on the defenders with constant artillery shelling and attacks by the infantry. And every day they drew closer to the main line of resistance. One by one the outposts fell, and this time they were kept, bringing them that much nearer to victory over the hated colonialists.

Giap called Thich to him. Offering his old friend a seat, he poured hot tea, which they sipped with obvious relish. "Comrade Thich. It is nearly done. I have made my decision. The last assault will begin tomorrow and shall not end until all of those below us are killed or taken prisoner. We have them now but if we delay much longer we will lose our advantage. As it stands now, I know that the Americans are not going to send their bombers against us. But, if we wait, the French may find friends in the outside world who admire their foolish stubbornness and force the western powers into sending aid. That must not happen. In addition, our own supplies are running low and we have lost too many men to continue this rate of attrition indefinitely. We must smash them and do it now. I have made another decision and that is that you will have the honor of being the one to destroy the last French outpost, Isabelle. That will be our final objective. Perhaps they will give it up when the main camp falls, but who can tell how these illogical Legionnaires will respond? In any event, it will be you who will be responsible for reducing their last outpost and either killing them or accepting their surrender. I give you this as reward for your years of faithful and unswerving loyalty to me and our great cause. "

Thich was overwhelmed by the honor. To be the one who received the final glory of their campaign was almost too great an honor for him to accept, but he forced himself to. "I promise you, Comrade General, that all will be as you wish, even to the cost of my own life, which I have always been ready to give in our cause."

Giap finished his tea, poured one more cup and looked at Thich 's crippled leg. "Your wound will not hinder you in this, will it?"

Thich rose from his seat and bowed. "Nothing will stop me from achieving that which you desire. I swear it by my ancestors."

Giap gave him permission to withdraw. Thich left, going immediately down the side of the mountain. He took the trenches and trails leading to the south, where he could get a look at his new objective, Isabelle! From an artillery spotter's position, he took over the powerful glasses on their tripod to examine the enemy fortification. Slowly he scanned the camp. It was a quiet time now. The men were resting, regrouping, and having their wounded and dead taken care of while preparing for the next attack. He stopped his glasses. There was a familiar form in the lenses. Focusing a bit more, he could tell it was the same giant Legionnaire he had seen several times before. What was it the man was doing? It looked as if he was passing around a couple of magnums of champagne and eating roast chicken. Where could he have gotten champagne? The giant handed the bottle to another man wearing an American camouflage jacket and the green French trousers of the Paratroopers. He too looked familiar. There was something about him that bothered Thich and frightened him a little. He'd seen him before but he wasn't close enough to make out the man's features, and Thich wasn't really sure he wanted to. A thought passed through his mind and was quickly sent back where it came from. What he was thinking was completely impossible, Still, he didn't like the look of the man and made a mental note to get a closer look at him when the camp fell.

That night, in the early hours after midnight, the final assault phase began. Preceded by massive artillery barrages on all remaining positions, the Viets attacked. Descending in the wake of their heavy guns, they swept over French placements and then were thrown out of them. Once, twice, three times in an hour, a bunker would be taken and lost. The Legionnaires fought like madmen, taking all the Viet Minh could throw at them, then coming back for more. But with each counterattack there were less of them. One by one bunkers fell into the hands of the Viet Minh and at last were kept. The French withdrew into a tighter circle around the main headquarters, until they were cut off even from the airstrip. But that made no difference. Nothing could get in or out anyway. The field was peppered with shell holes and covered by heavy antiaircraft and machine gun fire.

All that night and the next day, the attacks continued without interruption. It was the only thing Langer had seen that came close to the intensity of the attacks in Russia. Gus raged like a madman in his glory, leaping from one place to another, wherever the fighting was heaviest. By daybreak of May 6, only Isabelle and a small area around the headquarters was still in French hands. The Viets held everything else. The fighting continued until even the Viet Minh, with their superior numbers, were forced to stop and rest. The attack began again that night and lasted all through the next day. Five thousand men on both sides died in those hours. It was now only a matter of a few hours at most until they would finally make their last full scale assault. Then it would all be over. From Isabelle, there wasn't much they could do to help those at the headquarters. Secret papers were already being burned, and charges set off on radios and what stocks of ammunition they had left. Langer wished they had some of that ammo at Isabelle. The last few days airdrops had been trying to get in. Most of them were beaten off by the Viet Ack Ack and what drops were made usually landed in places held by the enemy. They were running low on everything.

At dusk, smoke covered most of the valley from burning dumps and bunkers. Another assault by a group of Viet sappers hit the north wall of Isabelle. Covered by machine gun fire the sappers exploded their charges and themselves in an attempt to breach a barrier of concertina wire. Hermann blew the heads off of two of them before they could set off their charges. He saw Gus hunched over to avoid the fire from an RPD raking the top of his shoulder-high sandbagged wall. Hermann hated the man. He knew that they were going to die and he was determined to make certain of one thing. Gus and the three men with him were not going to outlive him. Raising his submachine gun, he sighted at the back of the object of so much of his misery. He wanted to see Gus's face when he killed him, the same way he had seen his woman's. “Beidemann!" he screamed out, sighting at the broad figure. Gus looked up as Hermann pulled the trigger on the submachine gun. Click! The damned thing was empty.

Hermann threw it to the ground.

Gus called back amiably, "Catch." Without thinking Hermann reached out his hands in time to feel the weight of a grenade in them. Gus had been holding the grenade with the pin drawn waiting for the next attackers to come in range. Stupidly, Hermann looked down at the small bomb in his hands. The last thought he had before the grenade blew off his arms and part of his face was: The son of a bitch did it to me again!

Gus laughed and told Xuan who had joined him at the wall to get him some more ammo. Calling to Langer, he chortled, "Did you see the look on his face. The shit knew he'd screwed up again. God it was beautiful." Langer hadn't seen the look on Hermann 's face though he wished he had.

They went back to the job at hand killing thirty Viets trying to leap over the barbed wire. They died there, hanging on the stands. Langer knew that their bodies would serve the Viet Minh later as small bridges which more of them would cross over. Nothing to be done about that.

Giap ordered his men to push harder. The last two positions had to fall, and soon. Thich had moved to where he could better control the attack on Isabelle, taking up residence in a reinforced trench where he could personally direct the assault. He would give Giap his last victory.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

At midnight, Giap's Viet Minh forces began the last move of the uneven chess game. Artillery smashed men into bloody mud, until only remnants of boots and burned clothing remained. Others were buried alive as bunkers and trenches caved in on them. Still the French held out. Thich was furious that his men had not been able to reduce Isabelle. From a position of about two hundred meters from its sandbagged walls, he urged his men on. Wave after wave threw themselves at the wire only to be met once more by fanatical resistance. They fought men who believed themselves already dead and had no fear of dying.

Several times Thich saw the giant paratrooper fighting with such reckless abandon that he had to admire him.

Lieutenant Villon came to the four men on the north wall. "I have had orders from headquarters. Colonel De Castries says that anyone who wants to try a breakout can. Headquarters will surrender tomorrow. They are going to continue fighting the rest of the night to give those who wish a chance to break out. This has to be each man's decision. From the Viet Minh we have had a promise that all who surrender will be well cared for and no reprisals taken. Perhaps it is true. This battle is through. Now think about what you wish to do and let me know. At 0500 hours all the men at headquarters and Isabelle still capable of firing a weapon will cut loose to call attention away from those of you who choose to take your chances in the jungle. "

Langer wiped his eyes with the back of a filthy and bloody hand and asked, "What are you going to do, Lieutenant?"

Villon smiled, his young face many years older than it had been only a few months before. Ignoring the scream of a one hundred five shell passing overhead, he grinned bleakly and answered, "That is something that I will say only after you have made your choice. What I do or choose not to do should have no effect on your decision. Make up your own minds. I'll do the same for myself. Do it fast, we don't have much time left." Then he left them to decide among themselves.

Langer knew what Villon was going to do. He was going to remain behind and fight to the end. He was a regular officer of France, and too many times in the past the armies of France had lain down their arms and been marched off to POW camps. This was not any longer a matter of war, but one of pride. Langer had seen it many times before. He already knew that in this battle alone several officers had shot themselves rather than surrender. Even Colonel Piroth had killed himself when he had at last admitted that his artillery was no match for the Viets and that his overestimation of his capabilities had led to much of the death that surrounded him.

Langer hunched over and lit a Gauloise, cupping his hand to keep the flame of the match from being seen. He passed it around for each to take a drag from it.

"Well, what's it going to be? Do we stay here or take our chances on breaking out? I think we should let Xuan speak first. What do you think we should do, Xuan?"

The small Vietnamese took the last drag from the smoke and butted it out on the side of a sandbag. He felt good. These men from other lands had accepted him as one of their own.

A tracer from a sniper's rifle flamed overhead searching for soft flesh to enter.

"It is possible the Viet Minh will honor their word to you. They wish to present a good image to the rest of the world. If you surrender I think that most of you will live. For us of the Indigene it will be a different matter. To them we are traitors and will be treated as such. I am going to try to escape, but I think you should surrender."

Langer appreciated the little man's thoughts. He turned to Gus. "And you? What do you want to do?"

Gus shifted his buttocks sideways on the .50 caliber ammo can he was sitting on and farted. "They didn't get me in Russia and they're not going to get me now. I say we go for it. "

Dominic didn't really have to be asked; he just nodded his head in agreement with Gus. Langer cleared his throat. "That's it then. We all go out together with Xuan, the same way we came in."

Langer sent Xuan to Lieutenant Villon with their decision. It was 0400 hours now. They would go out in an hour.

Giap was walking through the rubble of Claudine. Only thirty yards away were the last of the main camp's defenders. All around him were bodies, many locked together in the lover's grip of death. Smoke from fires cast a mist over the scene, wavering and shifting with the rattle of small arms fire. The artillery would not begin again until he had left the vicinity. He was much too valuable to be exposed to any unnecessary risks. He had to admire his enemy, though he didn't understand what drove them to resist with such tenacity. A soldier has to give his enemy his dues, if he has fought well. For the small general it was nearly beyond belief that they had resisted him for so long. Much of the fortifications he was walking through had been built by the two thousand Viet Minh soldiers that had been taken prisoner by the French. Most of them had by now been returned to his ranks and were in action once more. It was nearly impossible to. believe, but his army had received over twenty thousand casualties, nearly twice the total number of the defenders. They were the enemy but they were also worthy of respect. Weary of the slaughter but glad it was now almost at an end, he left the camp to return to his own headquarters. In the morning it would all be over.

Thich stayed where he was, in a trench with his radio operator. His last attack had been beaten off and now he had reports that something was taking place in the trenches of Isabelle. He wondered what the French thought they could possibly do at this late moment? A burst of .50 caliber machine gun fire nearly took his face off. The French had opened up with everything they had, firing off their ammunition with complete disregard, where only minutes before they had been saving every round. Why?

His answer came when, over the top of the sandbagged wall surrounding the camp, small parties of men crawled, ran, and leaped over barbed wire and bodies. It was so unexpected that at first Thich thought it was a counterattack as did most of his men. They were caught completely by surprise. Thich raised up to take a better look and saw a huge shadow before him, a submachine gun chopping his radio operator to pieces and killing the other men of the squad assigned to protect him. The legionnaires crashed into the far end of the trench, heaving grenades and killing everything that moved. Thich lay face down in the trench playing dead as the huge body moved toward him, followed by the others. Langer fired short three and four round bursts from his Mats 49 as Xuan, Dominic, and Gus looked for their next line of escape. Langer stepped on a body. Thich groaned involuntarily at the sudden heavy weight on his wounded leg.

A hand grabbed him by the hair, jerking him around so his face could be seen in the light of the now glowing magnesium flares being sent up in response to the French actions. Thich's heart jerked in fear as he saw a grim scar faced man looking down at him. The barrel of his submachine gun was aimed right under his nose. A terrible crushing weight grasped his chest with cold hands He was seeing a dead man, a spirit come back to take him. That was the fascination he'd had for this strange man. This was his death coming for him and he had already killed the spirit once. His heart skipped two beats in a row then trying to regain its normal beat, a weak spot in the side gave way. A massive myocardial infraction was created in the wall of his heart, filling the cavity of his chest with blood. He was dying! The weight on his chest wouldn't go away, but the fear at the front of his mind was much worse. In the distance he heard the whisper of the Than Tien, the spirits of the mountains, calling to him. They had come to take him up into the dark hills of Dien Bien Phu. He died then.

Langer let the limp body fall. Gus squeezed off a couple of more rounds before commenting, "The son of a bitch looks like he died of fright. Be glad that ugly face of yours doesn't have the same effect on women or you'd never get laid."

Langer ignored Gus's remarks. They didn't have time for that. The covering fire from the French position was growing weaker; they were running out of ammunition. "Come on! If we don't move now we never will."

They followed him out and over the side of the trench. Hunched over, they ran through the dark, stumbling and cursing, killing anyone in their way. In less time than it would take to tell of it, they broke free of the last of the camp's defenses and were in the open, racing for the trees to the west. There was no one firing at them. All of the Viets had advanced in closer to the camps, which were still spending their last rounds to aid in the escape of a few of their comrades. By the time they got into the cover of the trees, chests pounding and dry mouthed, the firing below had faded to almost nil. Only twenty minutes had, passed since they'd gone over the wall.

Resting only a few minutes, they began to move up the side of the mountain, trying to be as quiet as possible. There were still some Viets in the vicinity. As they climbed, the sun rose on the predawn of the eighth of May. The tri-color of France was still flying over the main camp to the north. The Viet Minh hadn't replaced it yet with their own red and gold starred insignia.

The escapees could have gone on, but they had to wait and see what happened to their friends at Isabelle. It along with the main camp was still holding.

They found places in the brush to conceal themselves. From their positions on the side of the mountain they had a clear view of the valley.

At headquarters Colonel De Castries sent a signal by wireless to the Viet Minh. At 1730 hours his forces in the main camp would cease firing. De Castries was not going to offer the Viets his formal surrender. Instead he would just stop resisting, a small point of honor which meant nothing to either the vanquished or the victor, the results were the same. Major Grauwin gave out Red Cross armbands to his staff to identify them as medical personnel, in the hope that they would be permitted to keep taking care of their wounded. From their vantage point, Langer and his friends finally saw the tricolor hauled down as a party of Viet Minh soldiers went into the command bunker and came out with De Castries and his staff as prisoners. The Viets were amazed at how many French had survived their onslaught. From the banks of the Nam Yum River several thousand men came out to give up their arms. General Giap was relieved that he had not had to give the order to go in after them. But the main camp was his. Now all that remained was Isabelle.

Lieutenant Villon smoked his last cigarette. Around him were all the able bodied men who had chosen to stay. With them were the walking wounded. The wounded who could not walk had been moved back to the south wall. All the rest were with him waiting. In their weapons were their last bullets. Without being ordered to, the remaining Legionnaires clicked their bayonets onto the barrels of their rifles. Those with automatic weapons threw them down and went to search for the rifles of fallen comrades. The camp was finished, their radio destroyed and headquarters already in the hands of the enemy. Standing up, Villon pointed his steel tipped rifle in the direction of the enemy. "Avancez, la legion, avancez! Avec la baionnette. . . ." The Legion responded to the call and hurled themselves over their own wire at the stunned enemy. They ran uncaring into a barrage of machine gun fire No man stopped or hesitated. Villon died as he withdrew his blade from the stomach of a Viet captain. Three hundred men went out in that last wild bayonet attack. The farthest any of them got was one hundred meters. All died. Vive la mort, vive l'etranger . . .

Those on the hill turned away from the sight. Each had a strange feeling that they had been left out of something important. Langer wiped tears from his eyes as did the others, and Xuan wept freely until Langer touched his shoulder, saying, "It's not over yet. You'll be needed later. Now let's get out of here. There's nothing we can do. It's too late for them."

Two days later they were picked up by a patrolling helicopter and taken to Hanoi. Over the next few days more of the escapees from Isabelle began to show up. Less than seventy of the twelve thousand men who had fought made it back. Now they would wait to see what the next gambit would be. For the survivors there would be no more battles. For them the war in Indochina was over.

Four months later Gus and Dominic followed Langer on board ship. They were going back to North Africa. With them were the other survivors of Dien Bien Phu. The war was over. Soon those who had been taken prisoner would be repatriated and would join them. The French were through in Asia, but if there was any solace to be had from the desperate battle of Dien Bien Phu, it was that the communists were not going to get the whole pie. The Geneva conference awarded the Viet Minh the whole of Tonkin, which would come to be known as North Vietnam. Annam and Cochin China were also granted independence; and Cambodia and Laos were demilitarized and placed under international supervision. Langer knew that the communist pigs were not through feeding. In time they would go after the rest of the pie. He wondered if he would be back here for the next round.

At the moment they were going home to Sidi bel Abbes and Sidi Slimane. Dominic leaned over the railing watching the butt of Langer's cigarette as it hissed out on the waters of the Tonkin Gulf. Gus had left them to find something to eat, and Langer was thinking about the future that awaited him. Now what? He knew there was trouble in Algeria and Morocco. The Legion was needed closer to home. Another place, another war. Endless, endless war. And Time. Would it never end for Casca, the Eternal Mercenary?

Continuing Casca’s adventures, book 12 The African Mercenary

Casca Longinus. Cursed by Christ on Golgotha. Condemned to outlive the ages, and wander the globe a constant soldier.  Forever fighting, surviving, waiting for Him to return.

Emerging in our modern world, Casca (alias Casey Romain) gathers together the best-trained mercenaries to topple the regime of Matthew Dzhombe, the crazed dictator of Kimshaka. But killing Dzhombe, who claims to be an immortal god, is only part of the problem.  The toughest part is dealing with the treacheries of tribal politics and international intrigue, while the West, the Chinese, and the Russians all seek a lion's share of Casca's conquests.

For more information on the entire Casca series see www.casca.net

The Barry Sadler website www.barrysadler.com

THE CASCA SERIES IN EBOOKS

By Barry Sadler

Casca 1: The Eternal Mercenary

Casca 2: God of Death

Casca 3: The Warlord

Casca 4: Panzer Soldier

Casca 5: The Barbarian

Casca 6: The Persian

Casca 7: The Damned

Casca 8: Soldier of Fortune

Casca 9: The Sentinel

Casca 10: The Conquistador

Casca 11: The Legionnaire

Casca 12: The African Mercenary

Casca 13: The Assassin

Casca 14: The Phoenix

Casca 15: The Pirate

Casca 16: Desert Mercenary

Casca 17: The Warrior

Casca 18: The Cursed

Casca 19: The Samurai

Casca 20: Soldier of Gideon

Casca 21: The Trench Soldier

Casca 22: The Mongol

By Tony Roberts

Casca 25: Halls of Montezuma

Casca 26: Johnny Reb

Casca 27: The Confederate

Casca 28: The Avenger

Casca 30: Napoleon’s Soldier

Casca 31: The Conqueror

Casca 32: The Anzac

Casca 34: Devil’s Horseman

Casca 35: Sword of the Brotherhood

Casca 36: The Minuteman

Casca 37: Roman Mercenary

Casca 38: The Continental

Casca 39: The Crusader

Casca 40: Blitzkrieg

Casca 41: The Longbowman